


Yours

by JCapasso



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 28,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25129399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JCapasso/pseuds/JCapasso
Summary: What if Caroline wasn't the one to compel her mother in 2x06? What if she left it up to Damon and Liz managed to talk him out of it and get to know him a lot better in the process?
Relationships: Elizabeth Forbes/Damon Salvatore
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trying another new pairing. One that I haven't seen much of, but could be fun. Partially to see Caroline's horror at the idea of Damon as her stepfather lmao

Caroline wiped the tears from her eyes as she walked out of the cell where her mother was being kept. She had considered doing the compulsion herself but she didn’t trust herself to do it. Not only that, she didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want it done at all. She and her mom had just had the first real honest talk they’d ever had in her life. Her mom actually seemed to care about her and respect her for once, and now it all had to go away. She knew it was necessary though. It wasn’t just her secret she would be risking. It was Stefan and Damon’s too and her mother had just tried to kill them a few days ago. “She’s ready for you,” she told Damon as she got upstairs. 

Damon nodded and headed down to the cell. “You don’t have to do this,” Liz said sadly. 

“Yes I do,” Damon said just as sadly. “You tried to kill me,” he pointed out, trying not to show how much that had hurt. She had been his friend and hadn’t even tried to talk to him before trying to kill him. 

“I won’t make that mistake again,” she promised. 

Damon scoffed and shook his head. “Fool me once, shame on you,” he didn’t finish the old saying. Everyone knew what came next anyway. 

“Okay, look. Why didn’t you kill me back there?” she asked, trying a different way. 

“Caroline…” he started to say but she cut him off. 

“Bullshit. It had nothing to do with Caroline,” she called him on his crap. He didn’t give a shit what Caroline thought. That was clear as day. “You said I was your friend.”

“Fine, so I’m a naïve sentimental moron who cares too much no matter how much it hurts when people turn on me,” Damon snapped. “And I know it’s going to get me killed one day, but it won’t be today.” 

“No, just wait,” she said. The tone of his voice broke her heart just as much as his words did and his eyes showed a deeply broken spirit. How many people had hurt him and turned on him to resonate so deeply? She suddenly felt horrible for being one of them. “I’m sorry, Damon. I reacted on instinct due to fear and misinformation.” 

“Misinformation?” Damon huffed in question. The fear he got, but what information did she think she had wrong?

“We…the council that is…were taught that vampires were heartless creatures. That they didn’t have emotions or remorse. They were just cold-blooded killers. I thought…for a bit…that the part of you that was my friend was just an act. To blend in or something.” 

“You weren’t completely wrong,” Damon admitted. “I mean, you were mostly wrong about me, but vampires as a whole…see vampires have the ability to turn their emotions, their humanity, off and on. A lot of vampires leave it off. They are cold-blooded killers with no emotions or remorse. But not all of us live that way.” 

Liz took a moment to let that sink in and couldn’t help but wonder, “Have you ever turned yours off?” 

“I did. Once. And it was the most amazing feeling in the world. Not caring about anything or anyone. Being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, and not having to worry about how it affects anyone else. Not have to feel the remorse and guilt and despair. Once it’s off, you never want it back.”

“But you turned it back on,” Liz half asked. 

“It took a long time before someone managed to get through to me, and getting it back was the worst thing in the world. See all those emotions that you don’t feel while it’s off, come flooding back to you all at once. Everything you did while it was off and the horrors that made you turn it off in the first place just slamming into you like a freight train. I almost turned it right back off. Most do. I realized that it wasn’t worth it though. No matter how much it hurts, it’s not worth it. I swore then that I would die before I did it again. No matter how much of a sentimental doormat I am,” he told her, only being so honest because he was planning to compel her to forget it all anyway. It wasn’t the first time he bared his soul to someone he compelled or killed. 

“Please don’t make me forget, Damon. Give me a chance to actually /be/ your friend,” she begged. “Give me a chance to know the real you.” She wanted to know the vampire…the man…who would endure so much just to hold onto his humanity. The one who cared so much that he would let someone who tried to kill him live just because he considered her a friend. 

“The real me, Liz, is a killer,” Damon told her. “I’m a predator and humans are my prey.” 

“I’m not,” she said. “Elena’s not. If that’s all you were Damon, then half this town would be dead by now. Instead you’ve helped to save it.” 

“You don’t know me,” Damon snapped. 

“Then give me a chance to,” Liz pleaded. “Why did you turn off your emotions?” she asked, figuring that would be the question that would give her the most insight into him as a person. 

“You don’t want to know,” Damon said hauntedly. 

“Well if you’re really going to compel me anyway, you might as well tell me,” she tried. Judging by his reaction, talking about it might even help him. 

“Fine,” Damon shrugged. Might as well give her some idea of just how damaged he was. That would make her drop this crap about being his friend when she saw that he couldn’t be fixed. “I was still reeling from losing my brother…again…when I got an invitation from my great nephew, here in Mystic Falls. He wanted me to visit. It wasn’t my brother, but he was still family so of course I came straight here. I just wanted to reconnect with someone. Unfortunately, the only thing I connected with was the vervain injection he gave me as soon as I got there. See there was this secret society. Started up back during World War Two. Or maybe it was World War One. I’m not sure. It was one of the world wars. They /bought/ me from my nephew. Or would have if I hadn’t managed to kill him before I went down.” 

“Why would they want you?” Liz asked horrified. That he was betrayed so badly by his own family was terrible. 

“Because they studied vampires,” Damon said bluntly. “And not in a nice way. When I woke up I was strapped to table and this doctor was thanking me for killing Zachariah since that meant they didn’t have to pay him and talking about how easy it was to convince him to betray me. That cleansing the filth from his family tree was enough even without the promise of cash. He kept talking for a while, but I didn’t catch much after that. I was too busy screaming in pain as he cut me open and removed my liver, using clamps or something to keep me open so he could study how long it took to grow back.”

“Oh god…” Liz gasped with a hand over her mouth hoping she wasn’t going to be sick. 

“Oh that was the least of what they did,” Damon scoffed. “They started small. Over the next five years, I’d had nearly every organ removed at least once, my eyes cut out, extremities cut off, skin peeled off, was submerged in various acids, injected with flesh-eating viruses and all manner of other horrific diseases, had bones broken, joints dislocated, burned…you name it, they did it.” 

“And that’s why you turned it off?” Liz asked sympathetically, really fighting the urge to be sick now. 

“No. It’s not,” Damon said hauntedly, looking away from her. “I endured all that for one simple reason. I wasn’t alone. There was another vampire they had there. Enzo. There might have been others. I don’t know. But he was the only one in my area. In the cell next to mine. Every time I was on the verge of giving up he would talk to me. Sometimes about what we would do when we were free again. Sometimes about the revenge we would get for all that. Sometimes about the people we left behind. Somehow he always managed to know what I needed at that particular moment. He was the closest thing I ever had to a friend.”

“He sounds like a good one,” Liz said with a sad smile. 

“He was. The best. Unfortunately, I wasn’t,” Damon sighed. “He came up with an escape plan. See, they trotted us out at a big gala once a year to show off their prizes. They kept us on the verge of starvation though so we were too weak to do anything. We got just enough blood to keep us healed from their experiments. Enzo had the idea that if one of us got both our rations of blood, we could get strong enough to get us both out. We played rock paper scissors to see who it would be and I won. For a whole year he gave me almost all of his blood rations. Dealt with all of the extra pain from healing slower. Kept himself on the verge of desiccation so that I could get stronger and get us both out of there.” 

“I’m guessing it didn’t go according to plan,” Liz said with a wince. 

“That would be an understatement,” Damon huffed. “They brought us out at the gala and dragged me from the cage, but they managed to get the cage shut back up again on Enzo before I could break out of the chains. There was mass panic the second I was free. Things got knocked around. A fire started and the whole place went up like a box of matchsticks. I tried to get to Enzo, but the cage was coated in vervain. I couldn’t get to him. The fire was spreading and I was getting trapped. I couldn’t bring myself to leave him behind though. He was begging me to help him, and I couldn’t walk away. The only way I could survive was to turn off my humanity. I had to turn it off so I could leave him to die and save myself.”

Liz reached out and put a hand on his arm. “There was nothing you could have done, Damon.”

“I could have died with him. I /should/ have died with him. Instead I got to live and spend the next two decades leaving a trail of bodies all over the country,” Damon snapped. “That’s the kind of friend I am, Liz.”


	2. Chapter 2

“The kind of friend that couldn’t leave his friend behind without sacrificing your humanity to do it. The kind of friend who spared the life of someone who tried to kill him,” Liz said gently. 

“This isn’t the first time I’ve spared your life, you know,” Damon told her. If that didn’t work, this story surely would. 

“What do you mean?” she asked confused. 

“Do you remember back in ninety four, the solstice party at the Salvatore Boarding House?” Damon asked. 

“I remember there was a massacre there. The whole party was killed…wait…was that you?” she asked in shock.

“Yes. It was. And what you don’t remember is that you were at that party too. We spend quite a bit of time chatting. You showed me baby pictures of Caroline and I showed you how to use the pinhole projector and how it worked. You were nice to me. Most people weren’t. They followed Stefan’s lead and treated me with distant civility. So when things started to go to hell, I compelled you to leave and forget you were ever there,” Damon told her. 

“How did things ‘go to hell’?” she asked. “What exactly happened?” She was done judging him without knowing his reasons. If he had just told her that he left his best friend to die in a fire without knowing the whole story, she would have thought him a monster so she was going to get the whole story here too. 

Damon sighed. She might as well know his temper issues too. He would rather not have to compel her while she was begging him not to and wanting to stay his friend, so getting her to see the monster that he was even with his humanity on would help with that. “I was just starting to find myself again after my stint without my humanity and I came home to try and put myself back together. To try and get my family back. To get my brother back. That was all I wanted. Some connection to my humanity to help me hold on. Someone to care.”

“But they kept treating you with suspicion and ‘distant civility’,” Liz guessed. 

“Yeah. Until that night. When Stefan found out that I’d been feeding on the guests. I’m not sure what he expected. I still had to eat to survive and I wasn’t killing anyone and even compelled away the pain and memories of it so no one was being hurt or even scared. I only fed in the house, in private so our secret wasn’t at risk. But he still flipped out when he found out. He broke my neck and I woke up trapped in a shed. He had stolen my daylight ring, so I couldn’t even move from my spot at the back of the shed without burning up in the sun that was leaking in. Then he started telling me how much of a monster I was. How my very existence destroyed the lives of everyone I came into contact with, especially his. How I was a complete failure at being someone worth anything. And then he left me there. Trapped like that. And I lost it. I decided that if I was really such a monster, that if I destroyed everything and could never be worth anything, I might as well act like it. Once the eclipse started and the sun was blocked, I was free. I slaughtered everyone in the house, except for Stefan and my great nephew Zach, got my ring back, and hit the road again.”

“That’s horrible,” Liz breathed out with tears in her eyes. If he really was feeding on people humanely, then it was unfair of Stefan to attack him for it. And to be struggling so much already and come looking for a lifeline only to be told all that by the one person that he should have been able to count on…she didn’t blame him for snapping. 

“I’m horrible, Liz,” Damon told her. “I always have been and I always will be. You don’t want to be my friend. I destroy the people I care about. I don’t deserve friends. I’m a monster. But I’m also a survivor, and as long as you know what I am…what Stefan is…you’re a threat to us.”

“No, Damon. I’m not,” Liz said seriously. “I didn’t mean that /you/ were horrible. I meant that what you went through was horrible. Yes, killing all those people was horrible too, but you were lashing out from being hurt more than any person should have to bear. That’s not who you are. You do deserve friends. You deserve to be happy too.”

“I always lash out, Liz. That’s what I do. When I hurt, people die. You’re the sheriff and I’m a serial killer. Do you see the problem here?” Damon asked incredulously. 

“You lash out because you don’t have anyone to lean on when you’re hurt. You don’t have anyone to talk you down. To care. You’re not a serial killer, Damon. You’re a vampire. Which means that human justice can’t touch you. Only death can. And you don’t deserve to die. No matter what you’ve done.” It wasn’t like he could just be put in prison to pay for his crimes. For vampires it was either live or die. For heartless cold-blooded killers, yeah. Death is the option, but that wasn’t Damon. He was a good person who did bad things, but this entire conversation proved that he had remorse. No one capable of remorse, of love, of kindness, of mercy, of compassion, deserved to die. No matter what they did. Killing him wouldn’t be justice. “Let /me/ be there for you, Damon. Let me be your friend. Let me care. Give me another chance.” 

“Give you another chance to kill me, you mean,” he scoffed. 

She took the chance to look him right in the eyes, hoping he wouldn’t use the opportunity to compel her anyway. “I won’t, Damon. You have my word. I won’t try to kill you and I’ll keep your secret. You can compel me to tell you the truth on that if it’ll make you feel better,” she offered. 

Damon remembered the last time someone made that offer, and just like before he found himself crumbling as he shook his head. “No. I won’t compel you for that.” He took a deep steadying breath before saying. “I’m trusting you. Don’t make me regret it.” 

In a different tone his words could have been threatening, and Liz got the feeling that was what he was going for, but if it was, he failed miserably. It just came off as desperately hopeful. Vulnerable in a way that she’d never seen him. “I won’t,” she promised. “Just…will you do something for me? When you’re feeling hurt and you get the urge to lash out…come talk to me.”

“I’ll try,” Damon agreed. “But it’s not always that easy. See when you become a vampire, everything is heightened. Especially your emotions. Love, hate, rage, grief…all of it goes into overdrive. That’s why so many vampires turn it all off. Because it’s so hard to control.” 

Liz winced. She felt bad for him dealing with everything he had with human level emotions. If they really were that much stronger, she couldn’t believe he was still sane. “Okay. I get that. And if you do make a mistake and hurt someone…you can come to me then too. I’ll still help you. Even if it means covering it up. But only if you’re honest with me about it. If you try to lie to me about it or hide it behind my back, I /will/ hurt you.” 

“Or kill me?” he asked worriedly. 

“No. I won’t kill you. Not unless you actually turn your humanity off again, and from what you said, I’d be doing you a favor then.”

“You would,” Damon nodded. “But it won’t come to that. I’ll kill /myself/ if I ever get that bad off again.” 

“But still come talk to me first, okay?” she asked hopefully. 

“I’ll do my best,” Damon promised. 

“That’s all I can ask for,” she smiled. “Hug?” she asked holding her arms out, guessing he needed one as much as she did. Damon chuckled and wrapped his arms around her waist as hers wrapped around his neck. “Thank you, by the way. For looking out for Caroline. I don’t think I told you that yet.” 

“You’re welcome,” Damon said as they stepped back. 

“And I know that it ended up turning her into a vampire, but even with that, thank you for saving her life from that car accident. I’d still rather have a vampire daughter than a dead one, and you couldn’t have known that someone else would come along and kill her after,” Liz said gratefully. 

“It was the least I could do. I couldn’t stand seeing you so upset,” Damon shrugged. 

She patted his arm as she looked to the door. “So…I’m free to get out of here?”


	3. Chapter 3

Damon chuckled and waved her towards the door. “Sure thing. And you’re welcome to hang out for a while if you have any more burning questions. Just no personal stuff in front of the kiddies.” 

Liz laughed and nodded. “I think I will stick around for a while.” She had a lot more questions about vampires in general and if he was willing to answer, she wasn’t going to turn it down. 

Once they got upstairs, Caroline looked sadly at her, but Liz smiled brightly and held her arms out. “I still remember, honey.” 

Caroline barelled into her mother’s arms with tears in her eyes. “You do? How?” she looked at Damon as she stepped back from her mother. “Why?” 

“Because I decided not to compel her,” Damon told her. 

“Are you crazy, Damon?!” Stefan asked. “She’s the sheriff. And a council member. She tried to kill us!” 

“And now she won’t,” Damon shrugged. “I trust her.”

“Well your life isn’t the only one at risk with this idiocy,” Stefan snapped. 

“Maybe I should go,” Liz said nervously making towards the door. She doubted Stefan would be as willing to lock her up and get the vervain out of her system if he won this fight, so getting back on it was a priority at the moment. 

The next thing Liz noticed was a blur coming towards her and then another blur from the other side and then Stefan was pinned against the wall with Damon’s arm across his throat. “Don’t touch her,” Damon growled. 

Stefan shoved him off and Damon let him, but didn’t go far and stayed between his brother and the human. “I’m not /you/ Damon. I wasn’t going to hurt her. Just keep her from leaving until we settled this.” 

Caroline wrapped her arms around her mother’s shoulders and backed her away against the wall. “Let’s get the fragile human out of the way in case it comes to blows,” she whispered amusedly. 

“They do this often?” Liz asked worriedly, giving up on the idea of leaving now that she had ample demonstration that Damon was willing to fight for her and Caroline was a given, so she wasn’t really worried anymore and she did have a lot more questions. 

“You have no idea,” Caroline rolled her eyes. 

“Oh so you can decide who to trust with our secret, but I can’t?” Damon asked heatedly. 

“Elena never tried to kill us!” Stefan argued. 

“Only because she didn’t know how,” Damon snapped. “And it took her a lot longer than three days to get over it, if you remember.” 

“You can’t let her remember all this Damon,” Stefan tried an order. 

“If you want her compelled so badly, do it yourself…oh wait…you can’t,” he taunted. 

“Caroline…tell me you agree with me here?” Stefan turned to her for help. He may not be able to but she could. 

“Nope. I’m on Damon’s side here…and that’s a sentence I never thought I would say,” she chuckled. “I trust her too.”

Stefan turned back to Damon. “Fine. Have it your way. But when this blows up in your face I’ll be here to say I told you so. Unless I’m dead of course, and then you can live with /that/ for the rest of your eternity,” Stefan snapped as he stormed out the door and slammed it behind him. 

Damon rolled his eyes and turned back to his company. “Well /that/ was dramatic,” he said amusedly. “Drink Liz?” 

“Please,” she said, reaching out to take it from his hand. “Is he always like that?” 

“Holier than thou, thinks he’s always right, and can tell everyone what to do? Yep,” Damon smirked as he plopped down in his favorite chair with his own drink. 

“He’s not that bad,” Caroline tried to defend him. Damon shot her a look. “Not usually.” 

“Should I be worried about him lashing out and hurting someone?” Liz asked concerned. 

“Nah. But the bunnies should be very afraid,” Damon laughed and even Caroline laughed at that one. 

“Bunnies?” Liz asked confused. 

“Stefan only drinks animal blood,” Caroline explained. 

“That’s possible?” Liz asked. 

“Possible, yes. Good, no,” Damon told her. “That’s why he couldn’t compel you himself. Animal blood makes him too weak. Kinda like if a human lived on nothing but broccoli.” 

“And it’s disgusting. I puked it right back up when I tried it,” Caroline shuddered. 

“That too. Not many vampires can even keep it down. Apparently it took him months to be able to keep it down consistently,” Damon told her. 

“Why would he do that then? I mean…I’m all for saving people’s lives, but obviously you can feed without killing people,” Liz asked confused. 

“We can. He can’t,” Damon told her. “He has issues with human blood. It’s a rare condition in vampires, but he can’t control his bloodlust. If he drinks human blood, he can’t stop himself from killing. Even when he drinks from blood bags it still makes him lose control.”

“That’s awful,” Liz said sympathetically. “So is it just compulsion he can’t do or…”

“He doesn’t heal as quickly. He’s not as strong or as fast…even Caroline is stronger and faster than him and she’s a newbie.”

“What does that have to do with it?” Liz asked curiously. 

“The older a vampire is the stronger and faster they are,” Caroline explained. 

“And how old are you?” Liz asked Damon. 

“In vampire years, a hundred and forty five. I was twenty five when I was turned so total I’m a hundred and seventy. Stefan was turned the same time I was and was seventeen when he was turned,” Damon told her. 

“You said something about everything being enhanced as a vampire. What else, other than emotions?” Liz asked curiously. 

“All of our senses,” Damon told her. “Hearing, vision, smell, taste, and even touch. Makes for some amazing sex but torture is a major drag,” he joked. 

Liz winced as she remembered his story about the Augustines. And even more as she remembered how they got into this mess in the first place. When she was torturing him and all he said was that she was his friend. Almost like he couldn’t believe that she was hurting him like that. She suddenly felt like she was going to be sick, but managed to take a sip of whiskey to push it down. She barely heard Caroline’s explanations of how vibrant colors were and how amazing it was to be able to hear everything and see in the dark. Thankfully Caroline’s speech gave her a minute for her to get herself together. “So you said something about your ring being how you walk in the sun?” Liz remembered. 

“Yeah. It was spelled by a witch. It’s not something very many vampires have access to. Not many witches know the spells and even fewer vampires can earn the trust of one,” Damon told her. 

“But you both have them?” she looked curiously at Caroline more than Damon.

“Yeah. Bonnie is one of the witches that can do it. She was really nervous about it, but I think that’s just because she’d never done it before,” Caroline told her. 

Damon sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was trying not to spill her secret too, you know,” he said wryly. 

“Oh. Oops,” Caroline said sheepishly. 

“But yes. Mine and Stefan’s rings were spelled by Emily Bennett back in eighteen sixty four. Bonnie inherited her great however many grandmother’s grimoire and so she has the spell too.” 

“Caroline, will you give us a minute?” Liz asked her daughter. She knew that she would be able to hear her anywhere in the house now, but it was too engrained in her to have at least the illusion of privacy when talking council stuff. 

“Sure mom. I’m hungry anyway,” Caroline said with a shrug.

“Grab me one too while you’re down there?” Damon asked. 

Once they were alone in the room, Liz asked, “If it was something that more vampires had access to, would you have said something to the council?” 

“No,” Damon said bluntly. “But that’s just because that group of idiots couldn’t successfully hunt a vampire if their life depended on it. They’d end up accusing everyone in town and set off a wave of xenophobia and someone would get hurt. Especially them if they ever happened to find a real vampire that way,” he explained. “You I would have told though. You’re not a moron.” 

Liz couldn’t help but laugh at that. He did have the measure of the council, but unfortunately it was what they had to work with. “How many vampires have you known with these rings?” she wanted to know what he meant when he said not many. 

“Well there’s me, Stefan, and Caroline, of course. Then Katherine, Anna, and Pearl, the last two of which are dead now. Other than Caroline, we were all given them by Emily,” Damon told her. “That’s it. I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure the Bennett line is the only one with that particular spell.” 

“And how many vampires are in town right now?” she asked, hoping that she could get answers to her questions now that she was asking as a friend instead of an enemy. 

“Aside from the three of us…one,” Damon told her. “Katherine. And she will be dead soon enough if we can manage to get our hands on her. She’s a slippery one.” After a moment he added, “Oh and there’s one werewolf in town too.”

“Wait…werewolves? They’re real too?” Liz asked in shock. 

“Apparently,” Damon huffed. “They were supposed to be extinct, but…” He reached out and took the blood bag from Caroline with a quick, “Thank you,” and started pouring it in a fresh glass as Caroline was drinking straight from the bag. 

“Who’s the werewolf?” Liz asked, trying to ignore what they were drinking. 

“Who else would go to so much trouble to out a vampire,” Damon said irritated at the thought of it. 

“Mason Lockwood?!” Liz asked incredulously. 

“The one and only. Which explains why Tyler and the mayor were affected by the vampire device,” Damon told her. 

“Wait…I thought you said there was only one werewolf, but if Tyler…does that mean it’s genetic?” 

“Yes. The werewolf gene is genetic, but it has to be activated. It wasn’t in the mayor or in the kid. They would have had to kill someone, even accidentally,” Damon explained. 

“Like even if Tyler just bumped into someone and they fell down and hit their head and died, he would be a werewolf for the rest of his life,” Caroline said sadly. 

“You said they were supposed to be extinct?” Liz asked, not really sure what to do with that beyond making a mental note to never allow Tyler to become a cop. 

“Vampires and werewolves are mortal enemies and supposedly the bite of a werewolf is fatal to vampires, so vampires hunted them to extinction almost a thousand years ago. Obviously they missed some,” Damon told her. “Until recently, I thought all that was left of them were myths and legends, so I don’t know a lot.” They were interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the whole thing with Liz didn't happen until after all the Lockwood drama, but I couldn't resist the chance for her to see the full group in action so instead they were going to compel her that morning instead of that night.


	4. Chapter 4

Damon opened the door to find Jeremy there, “I need to talk to you.”

Damon rolled his eyes. “And why do I need to talk to you?” he asked before trying to close the door. The last thing he wanted to deal with today was Jeremy Gilbert. 

Jeremy pushed the door back open as he said, “Tyler Lockwood has to kill someone to activate his curse. He's not a werewolf yet.” 

“Wow, fascinating. Not enough,” Damon said before trying to close the door again. It was nothing he didn’t already know. 

Jeremy pushed back on the door again as he continued. “But Mason Lockwood is and he's looking for a moonstone, a special rock connected to the werewolf legend. That's why he's here.”

That changed things. “A moonstone?” Damon asked thoughtfully.

“And I know where it is,” Jeremy said smugly, seeing that he had the vampire hooked. 

“And you're bringing me this why?” Damon asked suspiciously. 

“Do I need a reason? Look, I just want to help, okay?”

“What's your sister say about this little discovery?” The last Damon knew she would be very much against him having anything to do with any of this. His lack of answer was all the answer Damon needed. “Oh, you haven't told her, have you?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Well, Elena doesn't want me getting involved in all this.”

When Jeremy tried to step inside, Damon stopped him with a hand on his chest. He hadn’t decided if pissing Stefan and Elena off was worth it yet. “And you're a Gilbert and you just can't help yourself.” Damon considered him for a moment before deciding to try and take the choice out of his hands. “Wow. Your search for life's purpose is as obvious as it is tragic.” If he could irritate the kid enough maybe he would leave on his own. 

Jeremy knew exactly what he was doing though and wasn’t going to fall for it. “You going to let me in or not?” Damon resisted the urge to sigh and he stepped aside, closing the door behind Jeremy, not bothering to tell him that the sheriff happened to be present. “Sheriff Forbes!” Jeremy stopped in shock at the sight of her, wondering how much she heard and why the hell Damon didn’t stop him from talking. 

“Jeremy? You’re mixed up in all this vampires and werewolves stuff too?” she asked worriedly. 

“Only because he keeps sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong,” Damon muttered pouring himself another drink and offering Liz one that she declined. Something told her that she was going to need her wits about her. 

“Caroline? I thought you were volunteering for the masquerade,” Jeremy said confused. 

Caroline looked at the clock before jumping up and throwing her blood bag away. “Oh god. I’m late. Gotta go,” she dashed out at vampire speed. 

Damon sent off a quick text message for more information on the moonstone, since he doubted Jeremy had much, before turning his attention back to the conversation. “How did you even find out?” Liz asked Jeremy. 

When Jeremy sputtered and obviously didn’t want to answer, Damon answered for him. “Read his sister’s diary.” 

Liz rolled her eyes. It was such a teenage boy thing to do. And writing down incriminating evidence was such a teenage girl thing to do. If you have to write it down, at least write it in code or something for crying out loud. “You really shouldn’t be involved in all this,” Liz told him. Elena was bad enough, but she was almost eighteen. Jeremy was only sixteen. 

“That’s what I keep trying to tell him. I am /not/ a babysitter and if he gets hurt or worse, I’m the one whose going to end up rotting for it,” Damon grumbled. 

“Look, I’m just getting a little information. It’s not like anyone suspects me or anything so they talk to me. It’s not like I’m going out hunting for vampires and werewolves myself,” Jeremy said annoyed. He hated when people kept trying to shelter him. He wasn’t a child and that babysitting comment stung. 

“Which is why you’re still here,” Damon said. “Where I can keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t go out and do anything stupid.” 

“Stupid like letting the sheriff in on the secret?” Jeremy asked smugly. 

“Don’t you start that too,” Damon told him. “I’m allowed to have friends who know what I am, you know.” 

“Okay, but the sheriff? You’re a killer, Damon,” Jeremy said incredulously. 

“And my other best friend is a vampire hunter. Your point?” Damon asked amusedly. 

“Seriously?” Liz snorted a laugh. “You do like living dangerously don’t you.” 

“Keeps life interesting,” Damon chuckled. “Speaking of…Ric!” Damon called as he heard the front door open. 

Ric stopped short at the sight of Jeremy. “What are you doing here?”

“Helping Damon. I'm the one who found out about the moonstone,” Jeremy told him. 

Ric looked at Damon who shrugged, so he looked back at Jeremy. “Does Elena know you're here?”

“Not exactly,” Jeremy told him. 

About that time Liz turned around to look at him, having had her back to him until this point. “Sheriff? You’re in on this too?” 

Damon rolled his eyes, not really wanting to get into that again. “What you got?” he asked as he started to dig through the box pulling out a book. 

“This is Isobel research's from Duke. Her assistant sent it to me,” Ric told him. 

“Mmm, Vanessa. The hottie,” Damon smirked at the memory. 

Ric grabbed the book from Damon’s hands as he answered, “Vanessa, yes. Now, do you remember the old Aztec curse she told us about?”

“Sun and the moon, blah blah blah blah blah,” Damon said dismissively, despite remembering every word. 

Jeremy, in typical teenage fashion, blurted out, “An Aztec curse? Cool.” Liz couldn’t help but agree with him on that one though. 

Ric was the one who explained for the newbies. “Yeah, supposedly vampires and werewolves used to roam freely until a shaman put a curse on them to limit their power. Since then, werewolves can only turn on a full moon and vampires are weakened by the sun.”

Damon smirked and wiggled his fingers to show off his ring. “Most of them, anyway.”

Ric rolled his eyes. Apparently the sheriff knew that too now. “According to the legend, the werewolf part of the curse is sealed with the moonstone.”

Ric put the map out on the table so both Jeremy and Liz could see it. “What do you mean sealed?” Liz asked curiously. 

“It's a witch thing,” Damon told her. “Whatever seals the curse is usually the key to unsealing the curse.”

Ric suggested, “Maybe Mason Lockwood believes he can use the moonstone to break the curse.”

Damon scoffed. “If we start believing in some supernatural witchy-woo legend from a picture book, we're idiots. Who has the stone now?”

“Tyler,” Jeremy told them. 

“Can you get it?” Damon asked him. 

“What happened to information gathering?” Liz asked worriedly. 

Damon and Jeremy ignored her though as Jeremy answered in the affirmative. “See, now your life has purpose,” Damon smirked. 

Jeremy looked at him confused. “So, you do believe it?”

“It's the same book that says a werewolf bite kills a vampire. Ignoring it would make me an even bigger idiot,” Damon pointed out. “Let's go.” 

Liz was glad that Damon was going with him at least to keep him out of trouble, and she debated going along or staying behind to talk to Alaric. She trusted Damon to keep Jeremy safe and knew how people tended to clam up when the sheriff was around. She also wanted a little more insight into this whole vampire thing and a vampire hunter seemed like a good person to help her get a well-rounded view of the situation, so she decided to stay back. If he was close enough to Damon to have free rein to walk in and out without even bothering to knock, then he would be a valuable source of information. Besides, how much trouble could Damon and Jeremy get into in the middle of a crowd? Even as she asked herself the question, she dreaded learning the answer. 

Alaric was still going through the stuff in the box, organizing it and looking for anything else useful, as he asked Liz, “So you’re in on this too? And not trying to kill them?” 

Liz chuckled and shook her head. “Yeah, I managed to talk Damon into trusting me, and as long as they’re helping to protect the town from the rest of the murderous vampires that come through here, I’d be pretty dumb to kill them.” 

Ric huffed a laugh. “Careful. That’s a slippery slope. Before you know it, you’ll be Damon Salvatore’s errand boy.” 

“He called you his best friend, you know,” Liz told him, getting the idea that he was feeling a little used and wanting to help. 

“He did?” Ric asked with a raised eyebrow. “He actually admitted to having a friend? That’s new. Usually it’s ‘I don’t have friends’,” he mimicked Damon’s voice. 

“Yeah, apparently I’m his friend too,” Liz laughed. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole idea of him, you know?”

“Yeah, I get that. He’s definitely complicated,” Ric explained, surprised that Damon was loosening up as much as he was. “The main thing you have to understand about Damon is that his whole attitude is about seventy percent act he puts on to keep people from getting close enough to hurt him. I mean, don’t get me wrong…he really is a cocky, arrogant, pain in the ass. But he’s a lot deeper than people realize.”

“Yeah, I’ve kinda figured that part out myself. Still trying to figure out whether to believe it or not though.”

“I first figured it out when Stefan was kidnapped by the group of vampires that wanted to take over the town. He and Elena came to me for help and he was being his usual dickish self, right up until Elena absolutely refused to sit things out and stay out of danger. Then it was like a switch flipped and he turned off the act. I can’t really put it into words, but his worry…and downright fear…over both his brother’s and Elena’s safety was beyond obvious, as was the fact that he would do anything, including sacrifice himself, to keep them both safe. That’s when I stopped trying to kill him.” 

“And you helped them get Stefan out?” she asked. 

“Yeah, see I’ve got this ring…if I get killed by anything supernatural I come back to life, so if they had killed me, I would be fine. That didn’t keep Damon from trying to keep me out of it as much as possible too, no matter how much he snarked that my life wasn’t valuable. My only job was to get him into the house and then I was supposed to disappear. Unfortunately, Elena decided to follow us and get involved anyway so that went out the window. Damon and I had to serve as a distraction for her and Stefan to get out instead of Damon just speeding him out of there,” Ric explained. 

Liz nodded thoughtfully as she considered all that and tried to fit it into the view of Damon that she was compiling and surprisingly it made a lot more of the pieces fit together. She doubted that Alaric knew much of Damon’s past. Certainly not as much as she did, and she had no intention of betraying his confidence by saying anything. She still didn’t know why he trusted her with all that in the first place. But it was obvious that, despite how damaged he was, he had a good heart. Even if only towards the people he cared about.


	5. Chapter 5

Liz had to force herself not to revise her thoughts when Damon came in carrying an unconscious Mason Lockwood over his shoulder. She followed them into the other room as Ric just shook his head at the sight and turned back to the research. The fact that Bonnie was with him and Jeremy wasn’t confused her enough that she wasn’t asking questions just yet, mostly because she wasn’t sure which ones to ask. Damon set him in a chair in the center of the room as Bonnie dropped his bag on another chair. 

Damon knew exactly who all was in the room and who wasn’t, so he didn’t even need to look up as he said, “Okay, one of you grab that corner?” 

Bonnie did a double take at the sheriff, but when she wasn’t stopped went to do as Damon asked. “Why are we doing this?” 

“Because I don’t want to stain the carpet,” Damon said as though it should be obvious. Liz couldn’t really blame him. That one carpet probably cost as much as her house and she even went over and grabbed another corner to help. 

“I knew you were gonna say something like that,” Bonnie said distastefully. 

“Judging again,” Damon chided her and Liz snorted amusedly, wondering how often they had this conversation. 

“He’s not gonna be out much longer,” Bonnie told him and went over to put her hands on Mason’s head as Damon went to tie him up. 

“What are you doing?” Damon asked the same question that Liz was about to. 

“You’re looking for a moonstone. I’m trying to help you find it,” Bonnie told him. 

Liz was curious how that worked as Damon said, “Oh, good, yeah. Find out if he gave it to Katherine, and find out where she is. And find out what they're gonna do with it once they get it.”

While Bonnie was apparently in Mason’s head, Liz took the opportunity to ask, “Is this really necessary?” She definitely wanted to know the reasons before she stepped back and allowed torture to happen. Even if it was of a werewolf. 

“Yeah. It is. Turns out Mason is working with Katherine. Which means he’s definitely a bad guy. We need to know what he knows. Most importantly, where the moonstone is, where Katherine is, and what she’s planning. He heals as fast as I do…almost…if that’s what you’re worried about.” She didn’t have any qualms torturing him for information so he didn’t expect her to have any now with an /actual/ threat. 

She winced at the reminder of what she’d done to him and knew that she didn’t really have a leg to stand on to stop this anyway. If Damon was right about them being a threat to this town, and she had no reason not to believe him, then he was doing the right thing. “It’s in a well,” Bonnie told them, interrupting their conversation. 

“Why would it be in a well?” Damon asked confused. 

“I told you. I only get what I get,” Bonnie snapped. When Mason’s hands came up and grabbed Bonnie’s wrists, Liz definitely noticed how quick Damon jumped to her defense and the almost worried look that slipped onto his face as he pried Bonnie away from him and pushed her behind him. Apparently, Bonnie missed it though because she still seemed just as irritated with him as before. “That’s it. That’s all I got,” she said before going to leave. 

“Hey Judgey,” Damon called after her. “Thank you,” he said sincerely when she turned to look at him. She just glared at him and continued out. 

“She doesn’t like you,” Liz chuckled. 

“She’s a witch. They’re always judgey little things. They don’t get along with vampires very well either, historically.”

“But Emily Bennett did?” Liz asked curiously. 

“Yes and no. Katherine saved her life so she owed her. Never really liked her though. Didn’t want me and Stefan to turn either. Called it a curse. She still made us the rings though. Maybe Katherine asked her to. Maybe it was because we were friends before. Don’t know,” Damon shrugged. 

“So…Katherine was the one who turned you? Is that why you hate her?” Liz asked curiously. 

“/That/ is a very long story that I’ll happily share when we don’t have a tied up werewolf in the house,” Damon chuckled. When Liz nodded, Damon turned his attention to Mason, and punched him in the face. “Wake up, wolf boy.” Liz winced when Damon grabbed a fireplace poker and put it in the fire to heat it up, but made no move to stop him. Not yet at least. “Someone’s feisty,” Damon joked when Mason started fighting the chains. 

Liz was watching Damon carefully, especially his eyes. How someone felt about torturing another living being was an important thing to know in judging them and she was heartened by what she saw. Damon may be pretending to enjoy it, but his eyes were dull. Disassociated. He hated this, but was doing what he needed to do. She wondered how much of the things that people hated him for were done because he felt the need to carry the burdens that he didn’t want anyone else to. It was a look that she was more than familiar with from the mirror. He had people to protect and if that meant getting his hands dirty than so be it. Now that she was looking, she could see behind his masks with ease. 

When Damon went to stab Mason with the poker, Liz couldn’t just stand by. She stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. “At least ask him a question first. Give him a /chance/ to cooperate.” 

Damon shrugged. He knew it wouldn’t do any good, but if that was the price for Liz to go along with this then so be it. “So...Katherine. How do you know her? What is she up to?” he asked conversationally. 

When Mason just spit on the floor in response and glared at Damon, Liz shrugged and took her hand off Damon’s arm, allowing him to do what he wanted to do. “I’m gonna go find something to eat. Assuming you have human food here.” She’d given him a chance, but she didn’t know if she could stomach staying for this. 

Damon nodded at her, and as she left she heard Damon ask, “When did you two meet? Did she seduce you, tell you she loved you? You're supernatural so she can't compel you. I'm sure she used her other charms. Katherine's good that way.” 

Liz got the idea that there was more going on than she knew with the whole Katherine situation and when Ric joined her in the kitchen, she asked what he knew. Damon said he would tell her anyway, so she didn’t feel bad asking someone else. “What’s the deal with Katherine?” 

Ric snorted. “That’s a can of worms if ever there was one,” he said wryly as he started making a sandwich. “She’s Damon’s ex. And Stefan’s. At the same time,” Ric gave her the quickie version. “Then she took off as soon as they turned and let Damon think she was sealed in a tomb so he would spend the next century and half trying to rescue her only to find out she wasn’t there.” 

“Oh god,” Liz said horrified. That explained so much. Particularly the pain in Damon’s eyes whenever she was mentioned. Given that, she had to ask, “Do you think she’s really a threat or is this more about revenge for him?” 

“Oh she’s a threat alright,” Ric told her. “She’s one of the old-world vampires. No remorse, no regrets. All about death and her own amusement. Usually at the same time. She’s the one who killed Caroline just to send a message to Damon and Stefan. Message being ‘Game on’. She’s a real piece of work.” 

“Oh…” Liz said dumbly. Killing Caroline alone was enough to get her on board with the kill Katherine plan, even without the rest. 

Jeremy interrupted before they could say anything else, telling them that he found something and Liz left her half-eaten sandwich on the counter as she followed Jeremy, Ric staying behind. He never had the stomach for the kind of torture Damon was doing and had no interest in seeing it. 

Liz listened as Jeremy explained the wolfsbane to Damon and when Damon finished reading the rest of the information from Jeremy’s phone, she took her turn as Damon continued trying to get answers from Mason. Liz considered getting Jeremy out of there but remembered that he had been the one to insert himself in here anyway. Maybe seeing this would scare him back out of it. She would get him out if it crossed a line. 

Liz heard the undertone of his voice when Damon called Mason a moron and told him that Katherine never loved him. That she was just using him. Damon was speaking from experience. She realized that he had no intention of Jeremy seeing anything too bad either when he told him to take a walk. 

“I’m staying, Damon. He’s had enough,” Jeremy said firmly as Mason begged Jeremy not to let it happen to Tyler. 

Liz almost intervened when Damon sped over and grabbed Jeremy by the throat, but she knew that Damon wouldn’t kill him. His words struck her as deeply as they did Jeremy though. “You wanted to be a part of this? Well, here it is! Kill or be killed! The guy is a werewolf; he'd kill me the first chance he got! Along with everyone I’ve ever known! So, you suck it up or leave.” Liz realized that Damon was right. The supernatural world had no place for human laws or justice. It really was kill or be killed and Damon did what he had to in order to keep himself and his family safe. Liz was glad that Jeremy left, but she wasn’t going to. She had the feeling that everyone always let Damon carry these burdens alone and then vilified him for it and she wasn’t going to be one of them. As much as the idea of killing Mason turned her stomach, leaving him alive to come after Damon and Stefan and anyone else wasn’t an option either. He’d already tried at least once. Even using her as the murder weapon. 

Liz wasn’t sure if Damon noticed that she hadn’t left as he continued taunting Mason. “You know, I look at you I see myself. A less dashing, less intelligent version.”

“I love her!” 

Damon actually felt sorry for the poor sod. “Oh, I know! I've been where you are. But Katherine will only rip your heart out. Let me do it for her.” 

Liz couldn’t help but close her eyes and turn away as Damon reached into the werewolf’s chest and pulled his heart out, but she forced her gaze right back and she was glad that she did. She could see the little bit of Damon that died as Mason did. The way he gulped heavily a few times to keep his emotions tamped down. The twitching of his face as the remorse tried to gut him. She couldn’t imagine how bad it must be for him to reveal so much through his normal façade, and she was more sure of her decision than ever. She stepped over and put a comforting hand on his back, but he just turned away, tossed the heart into the fireplace, and walked stiffly from the room.


	6. Chapter 6

Liz sighed and debated a moment before she decided to go after him. She would give him a few minutes to collect himself first though. She went back to the kitchen to finish her sandwich and found Ric heading out. “You’re leaving?” she asked him. 

“Yeah. I’m taking Jeremy home. Damon’s in his usual post kill mood, and that’s not something you want to be around for,” Ric warned her. 

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him as he left. Did anyone /ever/ care enough to push their way in with Damon? It didn’t take her long to finish her sandwich and she headed back to the living room to grab the bottle of whiskey and two glasses to take up to his room and knocked on the door. 

“What?” Damon called from inside.

Liz opened the door and went in. “Wasn’t sure if you had any booze up here and I figured you might need a drink,” she said casually, taking in his stance at the window, hand braced on the wall, and tension in every muscle of his body. She could see him struggling with indecision before he turned around. 

“I could, actually. Thank you,” he said, masks fully back in place as he took the drink she poured. “You should have left with Jeremy,” he said wearily. 

“No. I shouldn’t have,” she said firmly. “You shouldn’t have to bear those burdens alone, Damon.” 

“No, what I shouldn’t do is drag anyone else into the darkness with me,” he said hauntedly. 

“I’m not a child, Damon,” she told him, knowing that he was mostly used to dealing with Stefan and Elena and even Caroline. For all his years, Stefan did still act like just as much of a child as the others. “You can’t drag me anywhere. I’m stronger than that. I can handle it.” 

“I know,” Damon almost whispered, turning back to the window. “Why do you think I didn’t /make/ you leave?” Liz was still trying to decide how to respond to that when Damon continued speaking. “So…now you know. What I really am. /Who/ I really am.” Seeing it was far different than hearing it, after all. 

“Yes. I do,” she said sadly. “You’re stronger than anyone I’ve ever known. So strong that you carry the burdens that no one else can bear and you do it alone. Worse even, you allow them to vilify you and hate you for it.”

“I don’t mind being the bad guy if it keeps the people I care about safe,” Damon admitted. 

“And that takes a kind of strength that I can’t even fathom,” Liz said honestly. 

“I killed him, Liz,” Damon pointed out, not turning away from the window. “He was tied up and helpless and I killed him in cold blood.” 

“Yes. You did,” Liz nodded. The cop part of her was having trouble reconciling that, but she knew better. “Like you said…it’s kill or be killed. Werewolves and vampires don’t have laws. They don’t have prisons. They don’t have police. Yes he was tied up and helpless, but if you let him go he wouldn’t have been and he would have come back and made you kill him then, or kill you instead and who knows who else in the process. My kind of justice has no place in your world and I’m not going to try and judge you for it,” she said gently as she walked over and tried again to put a comforting hand on her back, feeling better when he actually leaned back slightly into the touch this time. As long as he treated humans the right way…or at least tried to…that was all she cared about. And seeing the kind of world he lived in with her own two eyes, it didn’t surprise her at all that he struggled sometimes with that. 

“You know…It wasn’t just me I was trying to protect by compelling you. Or just Stefan or Caroline either,” he said softly. 

“I know,” Liz replied. She didn’t get that then, but she did now. 

“It’s still an option, you know. You can forget about all this and go back to who you were,” Damon offered. 

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m still who I’ve always been. My worldview has just been expanded. And I don’t want to go back. I still meant what I said before. I want to be your friend.” And he needed a friend. Before his burdens got too heavy for him to bear alone again. She knew better than to tell him that much though. She knew that he would balk at the idea of needing anyone, so she just left it at that. 

Damon huffed a chuckle and turned around, holding up his glass. “To friendship then.” 

“To friendship,” she smiled and clinked their glasses together. 

Damon let out a sigh afterwards. “Stefan’s home. We should go take care of the body,” he told her. 

“Okay. Mind if I raid your kitchen again? I’m still pretty hungry,” Liz asked. 

“Don’t have a kitchen at home?” he teased before saying, “Mi casa es su casa.” 

“Thanks,” she chuckled as she detoured for the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs, frowning when she heard the ice in Stefan’s voice when he mentioned Damon’s restraint, but staying out of the brother drama. The last thing she wanted was to restart the whole argument about compelling her. She considered just leaving, but she still wanted to hear the whole Katherine story. More importantly though, she wanted to make sure Damon was okay before she left. She knew how much of a toll killing someone could take. In the department they got mandatory counseling after something like that, but even if there was something like that for vampires, she would probably end up being dinner just for suggesting it to Damon. Stefan obviously didn’t care, and Alaric found it easier to avoid the situation, which left it to her. Who would have ever thought her life would come to this? 

When she left the kitchen, Stefan was gone and Damon was sitting in the living room, swirling his drink in his glass and staring into the fire. “Do you ever stop drinking?” she teased lightly as she went over to sit down. 

“On days like today? Not really,” he said wryly. 

“If I drank as much as you have today, I’d have alcohol poisoning,” she said by way of a question. 

“Vampire metabolism,” Damon said matter-of-factly. “I’m not even drunk. It takes a lot more for that and staying drunk for more than an hour or two is way too much work for most days.”

“Even today?” she asked curiously, wondering how much worse days could get.

Damon scoffed amusedly. “Please. Today was only about a five on the bad day scale. You don’t want to be here for a ten.” 

“I think I might agree with you there,” she chuckled. She might just have to work her tolerance up a bit for that. “You feel up to telling me the Katherine story now?” That was how the next hour was spent. From the first time he saw her and fell in love at first sight, Stefan starting to date her afterwards, defecting from the army when she didn’t want him to go, begging her to turn him so they could be together forever, her getting captured, him and Stefan trying to rescue her and being shot in the process, deciding to die rather than live without her, Stefan forcing him to turn anyway, learning about the tomb, how faithful he had been to her for so long, opening the tomb and finding her missing, learning that she was never there and that she’d been avoiding him the entire time, figuring out what she was really like, and the entire game she’d been playing with them up until this point. 

By the time it was finished, she was ready to kill Katherine herself. The idea that anyone could be so cruel and heartless was just unthinkable. She knew what Damon had told her about vampires without their humanity, but this example was even worse than his own killing spree. That, at least, she could understand no matter how much she hated it. And Damon had told the entire thing in an emotionless voice, almost like he was reciting a phone book. Like he was afraid to show any emotion lest he let too much out. She felt bad for even asking now, but she honestly hadn’t expected it to be so bad. If she had known, she would never have put that on him today after everything else. She did need to know though. If she was going to be involved with protecting people from her, she needed to know what to expect. 

Liz was still there when Elena came storming in, also apparently beyond the need to knock, and didn’t even spare Damon a glance before going looking for Stefan. When Liz started to say something, Damon held up a hand to stop her, tilting his head to listen to what they were saying. Liz considered mentioning something about eavesdropping, but the look on his face stopped her and when Elena went rushing back for the door in tears, Damon got up and went after her. “Elena,” he called. “I riled Katherine up. I - I wasn't thinking. I didn't think,” he said brokenly as she turned around. 

“It doesn't matter, Damon. She won. Katherine won,” Elena said just as brokenly before fleeing out the door. 

Liz stepped up and put a hand on his arm. “What happened?” she asked sympathetically. 

Damon just spun around and whipped his glass into the fireplace. “The hell she did,” he snarled. “She may have won the battle, but this war isn’t even close over yet and the only way it’s gonna end is with her dead.” 

Liz let him blow off some steam before she asked again, “What happened?” She managed to get the story in between pacing and muttered death threats and, despite knowing it wouldn’t do any good, she said, “It wasn’t your fault, Damon. You couldn’t have known.”

“I /should/ have,” he snapped. “I should have known better. Stefan tried to tell me. I wouldn’t listen. I was so smug about having thwarted her plan, but she /always/ has a backup plan. Always. I should have been smarter. More careful.”

“Yes. You should have,” Liz admitted. “But everyone makes mistakes. And no one died. Which means everything can be fixed. Sometimes you just have to accept that you messed up and do better next time.” 

Damon nodded curtly as he stopped pacing and Liz could see the fire in his eyes as he said, “Yes. And next time it will be /her/ heart I’m ripping out.”


	7. Chapter 7

Liz went back to work the next day, using the stomach flu excuse. She kept an eye out for any signs of anything supernatural, particularly anything that might end up leading to Katherine, but it was a normal boring day. On her way home she stopped at the grill and noticed Damon and Alaric at the bar so she headed over. “Got room for another?” she asked. 

Damon reached over and spun the seat next to him around for her as Alaric said, “Yes. Please. Maybe you’ll have a little more luck talking him out of his stupider plans.” 

“They’re not stupid,” Damon protested. 

“Throwing her off the clock tower?” Ric asked pointedly. 

“Okay, so maybe that one was stupid,” Damon admitted. “I’m just spit balling here.” 

“Why not just wait?” Liz asked. 

“Oh no. I’m done waiting for that bitch,” Damon said distastefully. 

“Just hear me out,” Liz tried to placate him. When he sighed and nodded, she explained. “You have the moonstone, right? If that’s really what she wants, she’ll have to come to you to get it. You’ve been searching for her for how long now? She’s obviously not going to be found easily, but now you have bait.” 

“She makes a good point,” Ric told him. It was basically the same thing he’d been saying all along, but the sheriff made it sound more like a plan and less like just waiting.

“It could work,” Damon said thoughtfully. “And then I kill her.” 

Ric chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. “Sure thing, buddy.” 

When Liz got a call to meet at the Salvatore house the morning of the masquerade ball, she didn’t waste any time getting there. Damon didn’t usually call her unless it was important. She pulled in at the same time Stefan did, and refused to wonder where he’d been as she greeted him on the way in. He had, thankfully, warmed up to her a bit since the fight last week, but he still didn’t trust her much. Not that she could blame him. She was more than a little surprised to see Caroline there and apparently it was big because Damon actually handed her a glass of blood instead of making her get it herself. “What happened?” Stefan asked. 

“Go ahead. Tell them. You’re gonna love this,” Damon smirked, leaning against the table as Caroline started her story.

“She wants to do it in public. Killing Mason threw her off-guard,” Stefan said as he started to pace. 

“She’s running scared. What she did to Jenna was desperate. She’s out of tricks,” Damon said smugly. 

“We can’t underestimate her. We have to play this smarter than her,” Stefan said, clearly thinking. 

“Can’t we just give her the moonstone so she’ll leave?” Caroline asked worriedly. 

“No, Katherine’s not getting dick,” Damon snapped. “I’ve had it. I’m gonna go the masquerade ball and I’m gonna kill her. Tonight.”

“You’re not gonna kill her,” Stefan argued. 

“Don’t give me that goody-goody crap,” Damon warned him. 

“You’re not gonna kill her,” Stefan said again with a smirk of his own. 

“Oh really?” Damon challenged. 

“Because I am,” Stefan said smugly. 

Liz watched the argument and almost smiled at the surprised and pleased look on Damon’s face at Stefan’s pronouncement, but someone had to pop their bubble. “We can’t just put everyone at the ball in danger for some half-baked plan,” she told them. 

“We won’t,” Damon assured her. “We will come up with a plan with the least chance of collateral damage. That’s why you’re here. For perspective. The rest of the crew will be here soon enough. Once they drag their lazy asses out of bed,” he chuckled. 

“Okay, but I need to be convinced that there is at least a minimal chance of danger for the civilians before I agree to anything,” she said firmly as they got down to planning. 

Ric was the next to arrive with Jeremy about an hour later and Liz was blown away by his arsenal. When they mentioned that he was a vampire hunter, she’d imagined a couple stakes and maybe some vervain, but nothing like this. She paid close attention as he showed Damon and Stefan how to use everything and even found herself fitted with a wrist holster. She was suddenly glad that the dress she had chosen for tonight had long sleeves. Bonnie arrived about halfway through the tutorial with the grimoire and was brought up to speed. Thankfully, Bonnie brought the last piece of the puzzle to get her on board with this plan. Katherine being locked up away from the party for the confrontation was the only way this could go down. 

She would have liked to have Alaric there as backup too, but she got why he needed to keep an eye on Elena. She would have preferred that Jeremy not be involved either. Bonnie and Caroline were bad enough but at least they had their own powers to protect themselves. She was just glad that the plan didn’t involve Jeremy fighting, though he was armed for his own protection, just as they all were. Her main job was to keep a lookout and protect the humans. Just as she liked it. She came in handy too. 

When she saw one of the guests approaching Stefan and Katherine as they danced, she headed right over. When Katherine offered to fix her necklace, Liz stepped up and said, “Here. Let me, Aimee. Your mom was looking for you. Follow me.” She was taken off-guard at how much Katherine looked like Elena, but with the mask on and as dark as it was, it probably wasn’t as much as it seemed. She was just looking for it since they’d told her that they looked alike. 

When Elena got there, Liz started to get worried. This was the first bump in the plan. At least Caroline had mentioned that Katherine was trapped in the room set aside for her now and Damon and Stefan were on the way up. There wasn’t much that could go wrong now. When she started talking about people dying because of her, Liz had to stop her there. “You don’t honestly think that any of this is your fault, do you? She is a threat to more than just you.” 

“The sheriff is right,” Jeremy told her. “She’s messed with all of us.” 

“You’re really on board with this too?” Elena asked the sheriff incredulously. 

“Yes. I am. We have a good plan that keeps any bystanders out of harms way. Katherine is already isolated and should be dead any minute,” Liz told her. 

When Elena screamed and started bleeding, they all realized that something had gone horribly wrong. Bonnie was the first to figure it out. “Jeremy, it’s Katherine. She’s linked to Katherine. Get them to stop. Now!” 

When Jeremy took off into the house, Liz just hoped that he made it in time. As much as she would have rather gone herself, she knew that Jeremy was faster than her even if she did take the time to unstrap these heels on her feet. Hopefully he would be smart enough not to step into that room. Once she was sure that Bonnie had Elena covered and started helping with the pain, she headed upstairs after Jeremy. She knew that there wasn’t much she could do, but she worried about what Katherine would do to Damon and Stefan once they couldn’t touch her anymore. 

She passed Jeremy on the way down and got upstairs in time to hear Katherine say, “The three of us together, just like old times. The brother who loved me too much and the one that didn’t love me enough.” 

“And the evil slut vampire who only loved herself,” Damon snarked. 

Liz stayed around the corner, glad that they were talking and not killing as Katherine asked, “What happened to you, Damon? You used to be so sweet and polite.”

Liz almost snorted at that. She couldn’t imagine Damon being sweet and polite. “Oh that Damon died a long time ago.”

“Good. He was a bore,” Katherine replied. 

“Oh why don’t you two stop antagonizing each other,” Stefan said wearily. Liz was on his side this time. She couldn’t even see what was going on but the scorned lover vibes in their voices were bad enough. 

“Where’s the moonstone?” Katherine asked. 

“What do you want with it?” Stefan replied. 

“Does Elena enjoy having both of you worship at her altar?” Katherine asked with a smirk. 

“That was really desperate Katherine. Don’t you think that we could see right through you?” Stefan asked almost amused. 

“So it doesn’t bother you that Damon’s in love with your girlfriend?” Katherine asked. Liz’ eyes widened at that. Damon was in love with Elena? That definitely put a new spin on things. When Katherine mentioned that there was another wolf in town, Liz realized that she must mean Tyler. She was apparently going to get Tyler to activate his curse somehow and probably already had a plan in motion. Liz made her way back for the stairs and went to find Tyler. Hopefully before the worst happened. 

Liz walked into the office to see Caroline leaning over Matt. She could see that he was still breathing at least so she wasn’t too late. That was when she saw the girl with the letter opener heading for Tyler and she rushed in. She was too late to stop Tyler from being stabbed but when he pushed the girl away Liz managed to catch her and let her down easily just before she hit the table. “Sheriff Forbes!” Tyler said fearfully. “I didn’t…we were just…I mean…”

“Calm down, Tyler. Everything’s fine. I know,” Liz told him. “You’re not in any trouble. Why don’t you go back to the party and I’ll take care of this.” Thankfully, the attempt seemed to be enough to break Sarah’s compulsion because she wasn’t trying to get at him anymore. 

Once Tyler left, Liz turned to Caroline who told her, “They were compelled. It wasn’t their fault.”

“I know,” Liz told her. “Well, I suspected anyway after I heard Katherine talking about activating Tyler’s curse. It looks like it’s broken now for Sarah at least. Let’s get Matt checked over and make sure he’s okay. Did Tyler…”

“No. I did. He wouldn’t stop going after Tyler and I could tell he was compelled so it was the only way I knew to stop him,” Caroline said worriedly.

“Okay. That’s good,” Liz said relieved. The last thing they needed was another werewolf running around town just in case Matt wasn’t okay. “I’ll get the ambulance here, but right now I need to go check on Elena and make sure she doesn’t need one too.” 

“Elena? She’s here? What happened?” Caroline asked worriedly. 

“We’ll explain later, honey. Just stay with Matt for now,” Liz told her.


	8. Chapter 8

By the time Liz had Elena and Matt handled, and finished talking to Carol Lockwood about the damage to the study and the room upstairs that had housed Katherine, everything else was already over, so she headed to the Salvatore house to find out what she’d missed. She found Damon sitting in the living room with a drink in hand and a large book in his lap. “I hope that’s a celebratory drink?” she asked hopefully. 

“Mostly. It’s not quite the outcome I would have preferred, but it’s even more poetic in a way,” Damon smirked. 

“Oh?” Liz asked curiously. 

“Katherine is now where she should have been all along. Sealed in the tomb that should have held her for the last century and a half anyway,” Damon chuckled. 

“Okay, that is poetic,” Liz chuckled with him, taking the drink he offered her as she sat beside him. “You’re sure she can’t get out?” 

“Positive.” 

“Good. At least that’s over,” Liz said relieved. “Any new crises we need to handle?” 

“Nope. All’s quiet on that front. Unless you believe Katherine of course, but she’ll say anything.”

“What did she say?”

“That Elena’s in danger and has to be protected,” Damon snorted. 

“That’s it?” Liz asked incredulously. “No information on what kind of danger or from where?” 

“Nope. And I don’t believe it for a second,” Damon told her. 

“Yeah, I wouldn’t either,” Liz agreed. “About Elena though…” 

“What about her?” Damon asked curiously. 

“Well…what Katherine said about you being in love with her…” 

“Why? Jealous?” Damon teased. 

Liz snorted amusedly. “Not hardly. Just pointing out that she’s seventeen. And dating your brother. Sort of.” 

“I know,” Damon assured her. “And no, I’m not in love with her.” 

“Then why didn’t you say so?” she asked confused.

“Because it winds Stefan up to think that I am. Plus, he wouldn’t believe otherwise anyway. Not when I keep saving her life because he doesn’t think I would ever do anything if there wasn’t something in it for me. It’s easier to just let them believe it.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Liz said, a little less confused. “Why do they think you are then? Just because of the saving her life thing?” 

“I may have encouraged it a bit for a while. After finding out about Katherine, I was a mess, and my feelings got all jumbled up for a while. She looked like Katherine and I just couldn’t help but see her as the next best thing, so…”

Liz nodded understandingly. “But you came to your senses.”

“Yeah. I realized that…like you said…she’s seventeen. Barely more than a child. She’s a disaster. Constantly putting herself in danger and not listening to anyone that knows better. Trying to sacrifice herself at every turn to help people and just making everything worse. She’d drive me insane inside a week. She has a lot of growing up to do.” 

“Good. I’m glad you realize that,” Liz said relieved. 

“Careful or I might start to think you actually are jealous,” Damon chuckled. Like he would be so lucky. 

“I just don’t want you to be hurt is all,” she told him. “You’re my friend.” She refused to admit that there might be a little bit of jealousy there. Getting involved with Damon was a really bad idea though even if he did see her that way. If she was madly in love with him or something it might be worth the risk, but he was just her ridiculously attractive friend that she had a slight crush on. “Well since everything worked out okay, I guess I should head home and get some sleep. This has been a very long day.”

“Don’t I know it,” Damon agreed, raising his glass to her as she got up to leave. The next morning, he was reaching for his phone to call her though. “You know how you asked last night if there was another crisis brewing?” 

“Oh god. What now?” she asked wearily. 

“It might be a human thing, so I figured the sooner you get working that angle the better while we check out the supernatural side of things. Elena never made it home last night and her car is still at the Lockwood’s.”

“That’s not good,” Liz said worriedly. “I’ll start working things from my end. You keep me updated and I’ll do the same, okay?” 

“Will do. Thanks Liz,” Damon said gratefully. 

“Well it is my job,” she reminded him amusedly. 

“Not for another thirty-six hours or so it isn’t,” he pointed out, knowing full well the time frame for missing persons.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find her,” Liz assured him, not saying anything to his remark. It was a few hours later when he was calling her back to let her know that they’d found her and were getting ready to head that way. 

Liz met him at the school when he got there to pick up Stefan. “What are you doing here?” he asked. 

“I’m going with you,” she told him. 

“No. You’re not,” Damon said firmly. 

“I’m not one of the kids that you need to protect,” she told him. “I can handle myself.”

“I know you can. And in a normal situation I’d love to have you watching my back, but this isn’t a normal situation. There might be one vampire or a hundred in there. If it’s even vampires at all. We have no idea of their numbers, any defenses they might have, nothing. We’re going in blind.”

“All the more reason to have as much backup as you can get,” she pointed out. 

“Except for the fact that stealth and surprise are the only assets we have, and if we are dealing with vampires, which is likely, they will be able to hear your heartbeat and smell your blood pumping a mile away,” Damon told her. 

“I didn’t think of that,” she sighed, knowing that he was right. 

Damon reached out and put his hands on her shoulders comfortingly. “Believe me, Liz. I know how capable you are. This isn’t about trying to protect you and keep you out of it.” He also knew how sensitive she was about those kinds of things being a woman in law enforcement. 

“I know,” she assured her. “I get it. Just…be safe okay? And bring her home.”

“We will,” Damon promised and turned to head into the school to get his brother while Liz got back in her car and continued her rounds, trying to force herself not to worry about them. 

When Liz got a text that evening…finally…she huffed in annoyance at what it said. ‘Elena good. Heading home.’ She sent a message back immediately. ‘Are you okay too?’ She finally breathed easy when he replied, ‘Already on the mend. Stef too.’ “Should have included that in the first message, the ass,” she muttered. 

“What was that?” Caroline came in. She was just as worried about Elena as anyone, but Liz was very glad they didn’t take her with them even if she was a vampire and wouldn’t be caught out as easily. 

“Just got a message from Damon. They got Elena and everyone’s fine. They’re on their way home,” Liz told her, watching the tension drain from Caroline too before she rushed from the room to call Bonnie. 

The next morning, her phone woke her up at the crack of dawn, about an hour before her alarm was due to go off. “If this isn’t important I swear to god I’m gonna stake your ass,” she muttered as she answered. 

“It’s important,” Damon laughed. “But better explained in person.” 

“Fine. I’ll be there soon,” she grumbled before dragging herself out of bed. When she walked in the door of their house, no longer bothering to knock, she said irritably, “Can’t we get one freaking day without some vampire emergency?” 

“Occasionally we do,” Damon laughed again, handing her a cup of coffee just the way she liked it, making a mental note that the good sheriff was obviously /not/ a morning person. 

She gave him a half-hearted glare, mostly for having the gall to be so chipper this early in the morning, as she took the coffee from him. “So what’s going on?” she asked as the doorbell rang. 

“Hold that thought,” Damon told her, going to answer it. 

When Elena came in, asking the same question, another woman walked in from the living room. “Rose…” Elena said clearly nervous. 

“What…” Liz asked looking between Elena and Rose curiously. 

“She’s one of the vampires who kidnapped me,” Elena said bluntly. 

Liz unconsciously checked her wrist holster that she’d been wearing all the time since she got it, but Damon put a hand on her arm and shook his head. “She’s on our side now. Supposedly.” 

“Supposedly?” Liz asked skeptically, noticing the same look on Elena’s face. 

“Okay, so you’re new to the whole supernatural world, but what you should know is that things like enemies and friends tend to be very fluid. An enemy can become a friend just as easily as a friend can become an enemy when a big enough threat pops up,” Damon explained. “Alliances are made and broken all the time.”

“So you’re saying you can’t trust anyone?” Liz asked, getting the gist. 

“In a way, yeah. Everyone is always out for themselves first. Once you realize that, you can adjust for it and when your interests line up…”

“Okay. I get it. So we’re tentatively trusting her for the moment?” Liz confirmed, getting a nod from Damon as they all moved to the living room for the explanations.


	9. Chapter 9

Learning that the world’s oldest, most evil vampire would be coming to her town to chase a human teenager was not something that Liz was prepared for this morning. Then again, she didn’t think it was something she could ever be really prepared for. She left not long after Elena did, needing to head to work, but she spend most of the day distracted and going over their vampire emergency plans. Once she finished for the day, she headed back to the Salvatore house to discuss some of the ideas with Damon. 

When she walked in to see Damon and Rose sitting under a blanket on the living room floor, obviously naked underneath, she winced. “Sorry. I had some ideas to talk about, but it can wait…” 

“No, it’s fine,” Damon told her. “Just give us a few to get dressed.” If he put her off now and the shit hit the fan before they were ready, it would be his fault. 

“Right. Yeah. I’ll be in the kitchen,” Liz said uncomfortably and walked out, steadfastly ignoring the little spot of jealousy rising up. Damon’s promiscuity was practically legend. Seeing it was rather different than hearing about it though. It was also only part of the reason that she would never go there. She wasn’t going to be just another notch in anyone’s bedpost. No matter how gorgeous they were. 

Damon and Rose walked in a few minutes later and Damon handed her a drink per usual. She only drank it about half the time, but just having it in her hand helped. “Okay so what ideas do you have?”

“Well what you probably don’t know is that the town has an emergency plan in case we’re overrun with vampires,” Liz told him. 

“That’s never come up at the council meetings,” Damon said worriedly. 

“Because it’s never been needed. Things haven’t gotten that far,” Liz told him. 

“But now you’re going to put it into place? What about me and Stefan and even Caroline?” Damon asked, trying not to get irritated. 

“It’s a possibility, but that’s why I’m here. I need to know what measures I can take without hurting you. For example…do you have your own well here or do you run off the town’s water supply?” 

“We have our own well,” Damon told her. “We never wanted to risk contamination.”

“Okay. That’s good. And how often to you feed in town?” Liz asked. 

“Almost never. It’s too hard to know who’s on vervain and who isn’t,” Damon replied. 

“Okay. Good. Do you mind if Caroline stays with you for a while?” 

“Why?” Damon asked, trying to get to the point. 

“Because part of the emergency plan is to vervain the town’s water supply,” Liz told him. “I wanted to make sure you would be safe here if I did though.”

Damon sighed heavily. It would make things more difficult, but he could manage. “Okay. Yeah, we’ll be good. Just know that it will also make it impossible to compel people to forget should anything happen.” 

“I know. It’s a risk, but a necessary one,” Liz told him. 

“You realize that all this will do is piss Klaus off, right?” Rose chimed in. “You’ll be looking at a bloodbath.” 

“What other options do we have?” Liz asked desperately. “I can’t just let the world’s oldest and evilest vampire stroll into town and start picking people off.” 

“Liz is right,” Damon told Rose. “He’s not going to want to risk exposure. Of himself or vampires in general. If he’s as reclusive as you say, this should work.” He turned back to Liz. “What other ideas are there?”

“Removing curtains from all public places,” Liz told him. “I know that won’t affect you guys because of the rings.”

“It won’t affect Klaus either,” Rose told her. “As an original, he’s immune to the sun.” 

“And any other vampires he brings with him would be smart enough not to go out during the day anyway,” Damon pointed out. 

“Then that’s all I’m comfortable doing. Putting a curfew into place and forcing everyone inside their homes at sundown would cause a mass panic and civil unrest,” Liz sighed. 

“Yeah, people wouldn’t take that very well,” Damon chuckled. “We’ll just have to hope that dosing the water supply helps and we’ll keep an eye out for any trouble to hopefully head it off at the pass. And yes, Caroline can stay here. But don’t expect me to babysit or set curfews or any of that crap.” 

Liz laughed and shook her head. “I think I might fall over from shock if you did. I’ll just settle for her being safe.” 

“Safe I can do,” Damon agreed. 

Before anything else could be said, Stefan stormed in, obviously in a bad mood. “Do you know what Elena just spent the day doing?” 

“No, but I’m guessing you’re about to tell us anyway,” Damon rolled his eyes. 

“Talking to Katherine,” Stefan ignored his brother’s remark. 

“Why would she do that?” Liz asked worriedly. She knew that if Elena had been hurt that Stefan would be a lot more frantic and probably wouldn’t have even left her side, so she wasn’t worried about that, at least.

“Because she wanted more information and decided that Katherine must have it,” Stefan explained. 

“Katherine wouldn’t know that truth if it bit her in the ass,” Damon scoffed. 

“I know. But Elena believes her story. And if I’m honest…it is pretty convincing,” Stefan told them. 

“Well let’s hear it then,” Damon rolled his eyes. “Maybe we can manage to filter out at least some of the bullshit.” 

Stefan launched into the whole story as Katherine told it to Elena, and when he was finished, he turned to Rose. “Well obviously, I can’t vouch for all of it, but the part about how I turned her is true,” Rose told them. “And I can also tell you that going after families and such is Klaus’ MO. After what I did, he wiped out the entire village I came from and burned it all to the ground. He hunted down every vampire I’ve ever known and cared about. The only one I managed to save was Trevor and we were on the run for five hundred years, just barely staying one step ahead of him.” 

“So why did you kidnap Elena?” Liz asked. “It would bring you to his attention.”

“I wanted to trade her for mine and Trevor’s freedom,” Rose admitted honestly. “Replace the doppelganger that I lost.” 

“But it didn’t go according to plan?” Damon asked with narrowed eyes. 

“No. Elijah granted me immunity, but not Trevor. Since he was the one who helped Katherine escape in the first place, he killed Trevor.”

“Then we killed him and rescued Elena, so your immunity is off the table,” Stefan realized. 

“I don’t care about immunity anymore,” Rose said with a sniffle. “Not without Trevor. Now I just want to go down fighting and hopefully take him with me.” 

Damon took a moment to think things over before he said, “Okay so we operate as if her story is true for now, but don’t dismiss other options.”

“That seems like the smartest way to play this,” Liz agreed. “Which means I need to see about finding a way to unobtrusively offer extra protection to Jeremy and Jenna too.”

“At least Jeremy is in the know, so it doesn’t have to be so secret with him,” Damon told her. 

“Maybe we should bring Jenna in on the secret too? Just to make things easier and let her know what to look out for?” Liz suggested. 

“No. Definitely not,” Stefan disagreed. “It’s too dangerous and Elena doesn’t want her having any part of this.” 

“It’s not Elena’s decision,” Liz told him. “Jenna is her guardian, not the other way around.” 

“Damon let you keep your memories with the promise that you would keep our secret,” Stefan argued. 

“And I’m not considering telling the whole world. Just one person who needs to know,” Liz pointed out before turning to Damon. “Damon, what do you think?” 

Damon sighed. He could see both their points, but there was only one way he could go here. “As long as you do it before the vervain hits the water supply so I can compel her if she takes it badly.” 

“I will. In fact, I’ll go over there now,” Liz agreed. “Keep your phone handy in case you’re needed.” Damon nodded. 

Once Liz left, Stefan rounded on Damon while Rose took the opportunity to escape the brother’s fight. “What the hell are you thinking?” Stefan snapped. 

“I’m thinking that the easier it is to protect Elena’s family, the better,” Damon snapped back. 

“And how many more people are going to be told our secret just because your little sheriff friend thinks it’s better that way?” 

“As long as she checks with me first and gives me the opportunity to compel them if needed, I can live with that,” Damon told him. 

“And you get to decide for all of us? Is that it?” 

“You mean like you decided for all of us when you told Elena? Or when neither of you would let me compel Jeremy again? Or when you decided to bring Bonnie in on the secret? At least I’m involving rational adults and not children.” 

“Fine. But this is on your head. Whatever happens from this is /your/ fault. Just remember that,” Stefan snapped as he stormed from the room. If not for Elena he would skip town now and remove himself from this whole mess, but he couldn’t leave her behind. Especially when she was in danger.


	10. Chapter 10

Telling Jenna went well enough. She was shell-shocked for sure, but she took it decently. It probably helped that it was the sheriff telling her and vouching for the three vampires that were in Elena’s life. And that Liz was keeping an eye on things. Jenna was more upset about the fact that Elena didn’t want her to know about any of it and Liz suspected that Elena would have a lot of hard questions coming up. She knew that she had done the right thing though. 

The next morning she got a call from Damon about their new plan to get rid of the spell on the moonstone. She considered the matter for a moment before she decided that she needed to be there too. One good thing about being the sheriff was that she didn’t need to explain her whereabouts to anyone and helping to protect a group of teenagers going into a potentially dangerous situation was within her remit as sheriff so she didn’t even need to feel like she was slacking off work. When Damon got a call from Rose as they were headed down and cursed as he hung up, Liz asked him, “What is it?”

“Elena is trying to turn herself over to Klaus. I have to get to Richmond,” Damon sighed. “Will you…”

“Yeah. I’ll keep things under control here,” Liz told him. “Just go.” 

When she got down there to find that Jeremy was inside and being held hostage by Katherine, she was pissed. So much for keeping things under control. She was about to go in herself after checking her stake wrist holster but Stefan was too fast. He blurred past her and tossed Jeremy out before she could even react. “Damnit Stefan,” Liz snapped. “I could have handled it. This is why I’m here.”

“You’re human too, Liz,” Stefan pointed out. 

“Yeah. I am. But human doesn’t mean helpless,” she snapped. “I’ve been training with Damon for weeks now and never go anywhere without my wrist holster. I could have just staked her and got Jeremy out without you having to be trapped in there.” 

“It wasn’t worth the risk,” Stefan argued. 

Liz didn’t see any reason to continue arguing her point. There was nothing she could do about it now. Even if she did go in there, she couldn’t get Stefan out. Not as long as that spell was still up. Damon was going to kill her. She decided to wait until he got back to tell him about this. He didn’t need the distraction while trying to save Elena and there was nothing anyone could do about it right now anyway. She hated leaving him there, but she didn’t have a choice. 

In the end, she didn’t get a chance to tell him. She didn’t even know he was back before he turned up on her doorstep with a bottle of whiskey. She immediately invited him in, and grabbed two glasses. She definitely needed a drink after today too. “I’m sorry, Damon. Jeremy was already in there before we got there and then Stefan was too fast. I didn’t even have time to react…”

“I know, Liz. It’s not your fault,” Damon sighed. “Even you have your limitations.”

“Yeah. My /human/ limitations. I heard all about those from your brother,” she said irritated. 

“My brother has this habit of always thinking he knows best. He thinks it’s his job to protect everyone. You know that I didn’t mean it like that,” Damon assured her. “I know you can take care of yourself. But when we’re moving at speeds faster that you can even see, there isn’t much you can do about that.” 

Liz huffed and nodded. She knew that she shouldn’t take her mood out on Damon. He had never tried to shelter her that way and he was just telling the truth. There really wasn’t anything she could do in that situation. It didn’t make her feel much better. “I’m still sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I should have been there. I could have stopped him,” Damon said sadly. 

“You were busy trying to save Elena,” Liz reminded him. 

“Didn’t stop her from blaming me for it,” Damon muttered. “She’s pissed that I stopped her, you know. I got Bonnie to put a barrier spell on her house. She can’t leave. It’ll hold for at least a few days. Hopefully long enough to talk her out of being stupid.” 

Liz reached out and put her hand over his. He may put on a good show, but she knew how much it weighed on him when people blamed him for everything. The tough choices were always on his shoulders. “It’s not your fault either, Damon. You did the right thing. She’ll see that eventually.” 

Damon squeezed Liz’s hand and gave her a grateful smile before he changed the subject. “On the plus side, we did get the moonstone, at least.”

“Did you tell Jenna about today and the barrier spell?” Liz asked. 

“No. Jenna doesn’t like me much…big surprise…so I figure it’s best to involve myself as little as possible there.”

“I’ll tell her then,” Liz agreed. At least it was one burden she could take off his shoulders. “And you should probably go get some rest. You look exhausted.” 

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Damon sighed. “I just wanted to stop by and make sure that you know it’s not your fault.”

“As long as you know it’s not yours either,” Liz said with a sad smile as Damon nodded and got up, leaving the bottle of expensive whiskey behind. 

The next day, someone turned up looking for Mason Lockwood and there was only one thing she could do. She had to warn Damon though. She knew he preferred texting due to potential eavesdropping vampires around, so she refrained from calling him and just sent, ‘Girl looking for Mason. Possible werewolf. Have to make missing person report. I’ll keep you out of it.’ It wasn’t long before she got a return text. ‘Where.’ She sent back. ‘At the grill. Ric already here. Be careful.’ She wouldn’t be able to stay. She had too much to do, but at least Ric was watching his back. 

She didn’t hear from him again for a couple days, but she had to call him when there were a series of vampire attacks. It didn’t take long for him to rush up to her. “Damon. Thanks for coming so quickly.”

“I was nearby, Liz. What happened?” he asked worriedly. 

“Vampire attack,” she told him. 

“Oh crap. I was afraid of that,” he groaned. 

“It’s starting isn’t it? Klaus?” 

“No. Nothing like that. This is Rose,” Damon sighed. 

“Rose? She’s switched sides again? But she knows the town is on vervain,” Liz asked confused. It was obvious that the vampire attempted to feed on him but then ripped out his throat and left him to bleed out when she couldn’t. 

“No, she hasn’t switched sides. She’s just sick and delirious. She’s been hallucinating. I wouldn’t have left her with Elena if I’d known how bad it would get and we lost her,” Damon babbled as he ran a hand through his hair. 

“Okay. Damon. Relax and tell me what’s going on,” Liz said evenly. 

“She was bitten. By Jules. The werewolf bite is killing her slowly. The delirium and hallucinations didn’t hit until I had already left to hunt down Jules and she got away from Elena. We need to find her,” Damon explained. 

“Okay. First let’s get this party moved inside,” Liz said, quickly handing that off to one of her deputies. “Now come on. Let’s go find her.” It didn’t take long to do. They just had to follow the screams. She watched as Damon took her down effortlessly and gently talked her back to sanity. She felt horribly for Rose when she fell apart after realizing what she’d done. Maybe Rose really was one of the good ones. When she started begging Damon to make it stop, Damon managed to get her calm before picking her up and carrying her off. Liz followed them back to the Salvatore house. “You don’t need to be here,” Damon told her. “I won’t let her get out again. If she’s even strong enough to anymore.” 

“I know,” Liz assured him. “That’s not why I’m here.” 

“Then why…” Damon asked confused. 

“Just in case you need someone to stay with her again. And for moral support,” she told him. Her deputies could handle the party now that the threat was over. 

Damon gave her a sad smile and nodded. Having someone that he could lean on was invaluable to him. He knew it couldn’t last forever, but he would enjoy it while it lasted. When Rose started to stir, he rushed over to her side. “Hey there,” he said softly. 

“I’m sorry,” she said weakly. 

“You went on a murderous rampage? It happens,” Damon joked, trying to lighten the mood. 

“I’m sorry, Liz,” Rose said as she noticed the other person in the room, assuming that she was here to guard her. “I don’t like taking human life. I never have.” She got a haunted look as her mind started to roam. “That’s the worst part about it. The hunt. The need to kill. The thirst. The pleasure it brings you afterwards. I wasn’t meant to be evil. It hurts.” 

“Then stop talking about it,” Damon said testily as he turned away.

Liz could see how much it affected him too. How much he hated everything she was saying. Rose wasn’t finished yet though. “Damon’s a lot like me,” Rose told Liz. “He wants to care. But when he does, he runs away from it. I’m sorry for what I’ve done today,” she started to cry. 

“I know,” Liz said gently. “You’re not in any trouble. It wasn’t your fault.” She was clearly sick and delusional. Even for a human that was a pass, much less for a vampire. When Rose started seizing, Liz was about to step in, but Damon brushed past her and got up on the bed, rolling Rose her side and running a hand through her hair and over her arms as she screamed and begged him to make it stop. Part of her wanted nothing more than to not have to watch this, but she wasn’t about to leave Damon with it alone, so she sat on the other side of the bed and put a comforting hand on Damon’s shoulder. If all she could do was provide moral support, then that’s what she would do. 

Once the fit was over, she was mostly relaxed in Damon’s arms. “Who ever thought you’d be a nice guy?” Rose chuckled

“I’m not nice. I’m mean,” Damon replied lightly. “And I like it.”

“You lie,” Rose told him, and Liz smiled. Rose was definitely right about that. Damon wasn’t mean at all. Except when he had to be. 

“Shh. Just sleep,” Damon said soothingly. “Just sleep.” He held her hand and rubbed her arm, taking her into a dream.

Liz realized what was going on when she heard Rose say softly, “This was my favorite place to come as a girl. How did you know?” Liz felt the tears well up in her eyes at what Damon was doing for her. He’d told her that they could get into people’s heads, but not vampires unless they were weakened somehow. Apparently this counted. She almost felt like she was intruding as the dream continued and their whispered words from the dream carried over to the waking world, but Damon hadn’t asked her to leave. When Rose said that she wasn’t afraid anymore, Liz had a good idea what was coming if she knew Damon as well as she thought she did and she was right. When Damon reached for the stake as they talked about racing, Liz reached over and wrapped her hands around his on the stake. They would do this together. 

Damon wasn’t sure whether he wanted Liz to be here or not, but when her hands wrapped around his, he was glad she was there. He didn’t know if he would be able to do this alone. He glanced over and saw the tears streaming down her cheeks, but he could also see her strength and resolve as she nodded at him. He gave her a grateful look as he started the countdown both in his mind in in reality and on the count of three, he and Liz pushed the stake into Rose’s heart together as his own tears began to fall. 

Liz’s heart broke even more at his tears. She had never seen him cry. Even when by all rights he should have. She’d seen tears in his eyes before, but never had he let them fall. She reached up and ran a soothing hand through his hair and he leaned into her touch as he visibly tried to pull himself under control. “It’s okay to cry sometimes, Damon,” she said softly. “It doesn’t make you weak. It just proves your strength.” 

He took a few deep steadying breaths before wiping the tears from his face. He didn’t know how to deal with her words so he just ignored them. “I need to go…” he motioned Rose’s body. 

“Do you want some help? Or some company?” Liz asked him. 

“No. I just…I want to be alone for a while,” he told her. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” 

Liz nodded and leaned over to press a comforting kiss to his temple. “Okay. Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything, okay?” 

“I won’t,” he said, despite having no intention of doing so. Just because he /could/ lean on her didn’t mean that he should get in the habit of it. He would be alone again soon enough, and he couldn’t let himself need anyone.


	11. Chapter 11

When Liz got home, she realized that something had definitely changed with her and Damon. A lot had changed. She had been silently supporting him for the last month. Since she had learned about him. This was the first time that he had consciously let her though. The first time he had really let her in. And then pushed her right back out, but that was okay. She knew that he was used to carrying everything alone. It would take him time to realize that he could share the burden. He had let her when it counted though and that was the important thing. 

That wasn’t the only thing that changed though. There were also her feelings for him. She had always seen his nice guy side, but not to this degree. She had always seen how much he cared for people, but that was his brother and the people his brother cared about, so he cared for Stefan’s sake. This was the first sign she’d seen of how deeply he could care for someone new. And how quickly. Then there was what Rose had said. About how Damon wanted to care, but was afraid to. She could see that. And she couldn’t blame him. Not with how he’d been treated his whole life. 

Liz was self-aware enough to know that Damon was so far out of her league it didn’t even register, even without considering the vampire thing, which was it’s own whole issue. Even if he ever did see her that way, what kind of future could they have? What kind of life could a human and a vampire ever make together? When her mind started wandering to possibilities, she quickly pushed it aside. No, it was stupid to even dream. She was his friend. His confidante. She could be happy with that. On the off chance he ever gave any indication that he saw her in a romantic light, she might start considering possibilities, but until then there was no point. Unfortunately, it couldn’t change the fact that she’d fallen in love with her best friend. 

The next day Liz found out that John was in town, and that he’d brought a weapon that could supposedly kill an original vampire since apparently a stake in the heart wouldn’t work as learned with Elijah. That was all well and good. Learning that he’d known all along that the Salvatores were vampires, not so much. Learning that he’d blackmailed Damon for so long with that information and tried to kill him, just pissed her off. She contented herself with the fact that he was just as pissed that she was in the know now and completely on the Salvatores’ side. Not just pretending to be when it was convenient. 

She helped with the dinner party plan, and was stuck attending as Damon’s ‘date’. When Damon suggested that Ric needed a date too and mentioned Jenna, Ric was quick to say no. Liz managed to talk him into letting Jenna decide for herself and promised that between the three of them, they could keep her safe. Ric finally agreed, but only if she borrowed Jeremy’s ring for the night which was easily accepted. Even by Jeremy, who gladly gave up the ring to allow his aunt to stay safe in a dangerous situation and even promised to stay home that night and not invite anyone in. Just in case. 

The party went well if Liz didn’t consider her awkwardness at being a date of convenience to the man she was secretly in love with. Right up until they learned too late that the dagger had to stay in Elijah for him to stay dead. Which meant that they could only take out one original vampire with it, and since Elijah was now on the warpath and an immediate threat, that meant that they still had no way to take out Klaus when he arrived, which would apparently be soon. Thankfully, Elijah ended up getting daggered again when he went after Elena so that one was out of the way. One down and one to go. Somehow. 

The next week was spent with careful planning and trying to find a way to deal with Klaus. Just as they found a way and Bonnie was loading up with all the power of a hundred dead witches, however that worked, she realized the consequences of vervaining the entire town when Matt learned about vampires, Caroline in particular, and came to her with the information. She managed to get him talked down for the most part. At least she hoped so. It would have been so much easier to just have him compelled. She kept a close eye on him for the next couple weeks, on top of everything else, and she was feeling completely run down. Between that, planning for Klaus, her normal job as sheriff, training with Damon, and trying not to lose touch with her daughter who was still living at the Salvatore house, she was lucky to get a few hours of sleep a night and it was starting to show. 

Damon was more than a little worried about Liz. She was clearly running herself into the ground. He kept trying to get her to take a step back, but eventually he stopped asking nicely. “If locking you back in that cell is the only way to get you to rest, then I’ll do it,” he said firmly. 

“I’m fine, Damon,” she snapped. 

“No. You’re not. You’re exhausted and it’s making you sloppy. You’re losing your edge. And when the shit hits the fan we’re gonna need you at your best. So you are going to take the next three days off from everything, barring emergencies, and take care of yourself.”

“But if something happens…” she protested. 

“I’ll let you know,” Damon promised. “Look, Liz…we’re transferring the boarding house into Elena’s name as we speak. Not even we will be able to get in until she invites us in. We’ve planned everything we can plan and we’re just playing the waiting game now. Go home. Rest. Relax. Okay?” 

“Okay,” Liz sighed. “But you better call me if anything happens.” 

“I promise,” Damon said earnestly and she just nodded and left. 

Liz called out of work, as per Damon’s orders, and left them the same instructions to call her if she was needed, and then went home and took a long nap. By the time she woke up, she realized that Damon was right. She couldn’t go on this way. She wasn’t really used to the whole ‘self-care’ thing, but she would figure it out. By the time Damon called her two days later, she was feeling a lot better, and worried about why he was calling. Learning that they were going to be trying to lure Klaus out at the dance that night sent her through the roof. “Are you insane?! Luring him into a school full of kids?!” 

“You’re not telling me anything I don’t agree with, Liz,” Damon sighed wearily. “But Elena wouldn’t even invite me back in the house until I promised to do things her way. I didn’t know this was what she had planned at the time, but it’s too late to stop it. We could use some help to keep it from turning into a bloodbath.” 

“I’m on my way,” Liz groaned. Yes, putting things in the teenager’s hands was always such a good idea. And Elena blackmailing Damon and not letting him into his own house to get her way was lower than she would have expected of the girl. It wasn’t like he had much choice either. Everywhere else in town was steeped in vervain. Damon couldn’t so much as wash his hands anywhere but the boarding house, not to mention his supply of blood was there, and everything he owned. She didn’t blame him for caving to her demands, but Elena for making them in the first place. 

The first thing Liz did was put herself down as a chaperone for the dance. No way was this going down without her presence. Ric and Damon did the same thing, so hopefully with all three of them on the lookout things would be okay. Once they were all there and things were in swing, Liz snorted amusedly at Damon as he danced with Elena. She would never figure out how he managed to fit in perfectly in any situation. From the stuffy council meetings, to the elegant balls, to a silly high school dance. She could only tell because she knew him so well that, despite his easygoing demeanor, he was still on high alert. Just like they all were. 

Once Stefan was back at Elena’s side, Damon made his way back to the opposite side of the gym from Liz and Ric had the middle. She soon noticed that something was off with Ric though. He was spending more time watching Elena than the crowd. Elena was Stefan’s job. She knew that she wasn’t the only one that noticed when Damon caught her eyes from across the room and send her a questioning look jerking his head in Ric’s direction. “I have no idea,” she whispered, knowing that he would hear her. 

She watched Damon slip out the side door, and redoubled her efforts at looking for trouble. If they were right and Ric was compromised in some way, then she was currently the only lookout while Damon tried to figure out what was going on. It was about twenty minutes before he was back. “Big trouble,” Damon whispered in her ear, making her jump about ten feet in the air. 

“What is it?” she asked, trying to get her heart to start beating normally. Made even more difficult by the way Damon was all but pressed against her back, whispering in her ear right now. What the hell was it about the vampire that made her feel like a teenager again, anyway?

“Klaus is possessing Ric,” Damon whispered. “And it turns out that Bonnie’s spell will kill her.”

“Damnit,” she breathed out. “What can we do?”

“I don’t have time to explain, but I have a plan. I need you to trust me.”

“I do trust you, Damon,” she told him. 

“Thank you,” he said relieved and Liz was almost certain that she felt a kiss press to her cheek before he disappeared. She shook that thought from her mind. This was not the time to turn into a blushing schoolgirl. They were in crisis mode here. The next time she spotted Damon, he was dancing with Bonnie. Probably telling her what he needed her to do now. She kept scanning the room every so often, but was mostly keeping an eye on Ric. 

When the shit hit the fan, she was mostly trying to keep the rest of the kids under control and out of the mess, as she usually did in these things, but as soon as it was over, she rushed straight for the Salvatore house and got there just in time to see Elena slap Damon. She gave the girl a pass though due to hysteria and the fact that she couldn’t actually hurt Damon physically anyway. As she listened to Damon’s explanation, she figured out how they did it. She had known that Bonnie wasn’t dead. She trusted Damon, and he knew that Bonnie was the only weapon they currently had against Klaus. He wouldn’t have let her throw her life away like that. 

When Damon walked out and Stefan went after him, she debated whether or not to leave Elena alone right now before deciding that Damon would need her more. She was still a little pissed at Elena about this whole thing anyway and she knew that Stefan wouldn’t leave her alone for long. She got into the hallway in time to hear Damon say, “Don’t get me wrong, Stefan. I don’t mind being the bad guy. I’ll make all the life and death decisions while you’re busy worrying about collateral damage…I’ll even let her hit me for it…but at the end of the day, I’ll be the one to keep her alive.” 

She waited for Stefan to walk back past her before heading upstairs after Damon. She was on his side with this one. When collateral damage was the death of innocents, not so much, but this time Damon was right. Hurt feelings could be fixed. They could have all been dead otherwise. Once again, he was proving himself willing and able to shoulder the burdens that no one else could bear.


	12. Chapter 12

“Since I’m sure no one else has bothered to say it, let me. Thank you, Damon,” Liz said as she stepped into his room. 

Damon snorted derisively. “I’m sure you’ll be the only one to say it,” he said wearily. “But you’re welcome.” He turned to give her a hopeful smile. “You think I could give you the full update after a shower?” He felt gross. Between all those sweaty teenagers he was dancing with half the night and the blood he was half covered with, he needed to clean up. 

“Yeah. Sure,” Liz told him, turning to leave. 

“You’re welcome to hang up here and wait,” Damon offered. “If you want to avoid the drama party downstairs.” 

She got the hint that he was the one who wanted to avoid and didn’t want to have to go looking for her after so she just nodded and went to look over his books as he headed for his bathroom. She grabbed the first book that looked halfway interesting and went to his desk in the back corner to sit down and read. Anything to keep her mind off the fact that he was wet and naked with just a door separating them. To keep her mind off the way he kissed her cheek at the dance. It didn’t work very well though. Should that kiss count as showing romantic interest? Should she start trying to decide if there was any way they could work? Should she consider telling him how she felt? By the time the water turned off, she had come to the conclusion that she would think about saying something once this mess was over. Neither of them needed the distraction right now. 

When Damon came out of the bathroom, tossing his dirty clothes on the bed, Elena came in before she could say anything and Damon turned to her. “Ugh. Look. Klaus had to think she was dead. Your reaction had to be real,” he tried to explain. 

“I understand why you did what you did. Klaus was fooled, and Bonnie's alive,” Elena said seriously, not noticing the sheriff sitting in the corner behind her. Liz was just trying to give them a chance to work their issues out and she knew that leaving would draw too much attention to herself. Damon knew she was here and that was the important thing. 

“Here's to duplicity,” Damon said giving a mocking toast. 

Elena wasn’t done yet. “But let's get one thing straight, Damon. Bonnie will not die for me, I will not let that happen.”

“We need to kill Klaus, Elena. Real Klaus. Who will probably be coming to pay you a visit soon now that he knows that Bonnie is dead. She's the only one who can do it,” Damon tried to reason with her. 

“We'll find another way,” Elena said firmly. 

“I hope so,” Damon replied honestly. 

Elena looked at the floor sheepishly. “Look, I shouldn’t have hit you.”

Damon gave an almost amused half-smile. “Apology accepted.” Once that was settled, he had something to say too. “Let me be clear about something. If it comes down to you and the witch again, I will gladly let Bonnie die. I will always. Choose. You.” 

Elena wasn’t sure what to say to that, so just said, “Good night, Damon.”

“Good night.”

Once they were alone, Liz stepped out of the corner. “Would you really let Bonnie die?” she asked curiously, not sure what to think about that. Everything else about that conversation made perfect sense to her. She knew that Damon made Elena his priority because of Stefan’s feelings for her and she was relatively impressed with Elena’s maturity at understanding and apologizing for hitting him. She found it hard to believe that Damon was taking Bonnie’s life as lightly as he was though. 

“If I knew of another way, I’d take it. But the way the situation sits right now, it’s her or Elena and probably half the town. I don’t see that we have a choice,” Damon said wearily. 

“But you’re still looking for one?” Liz asked hopefully. When he put it that way it seemed obvious, but she would never be okay with letting a teenager sacrifice her life. 

“Look at my desk,” he said with a weary chuckle, gesturing to where she was sitting. 

She hadn’t really looked beyond seeing that there was nowhere to set her book without moving things around so she took the chance to look now. There were a dozen books about original vampires, myths, legends, drawings of things that she couldn’t even make sense of and she could even see areas where he had scribbled over things in obvious frustration. “Okay. As long as we’re not accepting this as the only outcome until there’s no other choice.” 

“We’re not,” Damon assured her. “But we’re running out of time.” 

“I know,” Liz said sadly as she got up and went over to him, placing her hands on his shoulders. “And as much as I hate this idea with every fiber of my being…I get it…and I’ll be in your corner when it goes down.” 

Damon closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the relief washed over him. He raised his hands to her shoulders too, unable to resist brushing a thumb across her cheek. “Thank you, Liz. For everything,” he said softly as he opened his eyes and looked into hers. 

She was bowled over for a moment by his gaze before she managed to say, “Always, Damon.” 

Damon gave her a slow smile before stepping away. No matter how much he wanted this, he couldn’t go there. Especially not now. Maybe not ever. They could never work long term and getting her just to lose her would kill him. “So…full story now?” 

“Please,” Liz said hopefully moving to the chair closer to his bed that he was now plopped down on as he explained everything he figured out and how he figured it out, along with the spell Bonnie used to make herself appear dead. Damon coming up with plans on his own always made her nervous, only because he didn’t usually take into account other people outside the ones in his sphere of influence. In this case, that part had already been taken care of and it was just making adjustments for the rest, and if there was one thing Damon Salvatore was good at it was strategy. So much so that Liz managed to bring up a question that had been on her mind for a while. “When you were a soldier before…when you were human…were you an officer?” 

Damon snorted a laugh. “Not hardly. I was far too meek and timid back then.”

“You? Meek and timid?” she laughed. 

“You would be surprised,” he said amusedly. “Why do you ask?” 

“Just that you’re so good at the whole battle planning thing. For all that you don’t seem to take civilians into account,” she pointed out. 

Damon shrugged. “I read a lot. Including Sun Tzu.” 

“And what does Sun Tzu have to say about collateral damage?” Liz asked curiously. 

“That any leader has to be willing to accept it otherwise the enemy will use that against you by targeting civilians to force your hand,” Damon told her. 

Liz considered that for a moment before nodding. That explained a lot. About both his style and personality. “As long as you’re always willing to accept ways to minimize it when they’re suggested.”

“Don’t I always?” Damon chuckled. 

“Yes. You do,” Liz agreed. “And I thank you for that.” It would be far too easy for him to declare that he knows best and not listen to anyone else. Like Stefan and Elena tended to do more often than not, actually. She loved that he was always open to suggestions. “Now…about suggestions…what if Bonnie were to wear one of the Gilbert rings? Would that bring her back?” 

“No,” Damon shook his head sadly. “They only work for non-supernaturals. Part of what I’ve been working on his how to tweak that particular spell to fix that, but I don’t know nearly enough about magic to get anywhere. And neither does she. I’ve reached out to a few other witches I know, but they all say it can’t be done.” 

“Well, we’ll keep thinking,” she told him. 

“Yeah. We will. And in the meantime, I think we both need a good night’s sleep. Never know when the next crisis will roll down the pipe.” 

“Don’t I know it,” she huffed a laugh. “Goodnight, Damon.”

“Goodnight, Liz,” he smiled at her as she went to leave.


	13. Chapter 13

Liz was on her lunch break the next day when she got a text from Damon that nearly sent her through the roof again. If someone didn’t get Elena under control she was going to end up with high blood pressure. Now Elena had an original vampire on her side and had talked Stefan around too. Liz knew her daughter well enough to know that she wouldn’t take sides against Elena, which left just her and Damon and that wasn’t a fight they could win. Once again, Elena was forcing their hands. There was nothing she could do right now. Nothing /to/ do right now, so she finished up her shift before heading for the Salvatore house to see what they could manage to salvage from this. 

Liz got there not long before Elena did, and this time found Jenna and Ric, who was back to himself now, waiting too. They weren’t any happier with Elena and the rest of them. Even Stefan wasn’t happy, but he was supporting her. When Elena got there she explained the truth about the curse that was going to be broken before explaining the plan that she and Elijah cooked up. To Liz’s mind it wasn’t much different than the one with Bonnie dying for everyone. It was just Elena in her place. No one else here was that objective though and she didn’t dare bring it up. It wasn’t like they’d been given a choice anyway. The real part of this plan that she had a problem with was trusting Elijah. She trusted Damon because he’d proven that he could be trusted. She trusted Stefan to a lesser degree for the same reason. She trusted her daughter because she was her daughter. That was it as far as her trust of vampires went. 

When Damon stormed out about halfway through the conversation, she considered going after him, but decided that someone needed to be able to fill him in on what he missed, so she stuck around. She didn’t think anything of it when Elena went up after him until Stefan lit out of the room like he was on fire and she rushed after him, arriving just in time to hear Damon say, “Go ahead. Wish me an eternity of misery. Believe me, you’ll get over it.” She was still trying to figure out exactly what happened when Stefan charged Damon and Damon quickly had him pinned against the wall. “Admit it. You just wish you had the balls to do it yourself.” 

That was when it clicked for Liz. The blood around Elena’s mouth and the fight. The eternity of misery. Damon had force-fed Elena his blood so that she would come back after she died. When Damon hit the ground and Stefan charged him again, she jumped in the middle. “Enough! Both of you!” she snapped. She didn’t even realize how stupid what she’d done was until after Stefan had stopped. She had just thrown herself between Damon and an enraged vampire. It was pure luck that Stefan actually stopped and didn’t hurt her. 

When Elena yelled at her to get Damon out of there, she resisted the urge to point out that this was Damon’s room, and decided that defusing the situation was a better use of her time. Damon let her lead him out and she could tell by the fact that he wasn’t healing at the moment that he needed some blood so she led him down to the basement to their blood fridge and waited until he was drinking before she said anything about what happened. “I get why you did what you did, Damon. Really. But please tell me you get why it was wrong?” 

“I know,” Damon huffed. “But what else was I supposed to do? She’s so damn intent on getting herself killed and that’s gonna crush Stefan…who knows if he’d even be able to recover from that…”

“I know, Damon. But you need to realize that it’s not your job to fix everything and everyone. You can’t take a choice like vampirism away from someone,” she said gently. 

“But it’s okay for her to just give up her life?” 

“No. It’s not,” Liz told him. She really did get why he did it. The elixir was a shot in the dark at best. This way he knew for a fact would work. He was being the bad guy again to save someone else. It was what he did. “And you have every right to save her life. But making such a serious life decision for her is a different story.”

“Fine. I get it. I’m a monster. I’ve finally gone too far for you. You can go now,” Damon snapped turning away from her. 

Liz grabbed his arm and spun him back around. “No, Damon. You are not a monster, and I’m not going anywhere. Like I said, I understand why you did what you did and I will always support you. I just want you to understand why it was wrong.” 

“If it was so wrong then how can you support me?” Damon asked confused. 

“Because you were desperate and acted impulsively. You were backed into a corner and fought your way out. That doesn’t make you a bad guy. I don’t have to agree with you to support you. You’re my friend. Always.” 

Damon still didn’t get it, but he accepted it. “So what do I do now?” Damon asked worriedly. 

“You do what you can to fix it, and then just accept the consequences if you can’t,” Liz told him. “And I’ll be right here with you whatever those consequences are.” 

Damon reached out a hand to cup her cheek before he could even stop himself. “Thank you, Liz,” he whispered. 

“You’re welcome,” she whispered back, getting lost in his eyes again. 

Damon managed to stop himself before he made his second stupidly impulsive decision of the night and stepped away, heading back upstairs. Liz took a few deep breaths to slow her heart rate before she followed him to find that everything was breaking up. She decided that going home to get some rest before things went really insane tomorrow was a better use of her time than dealing with all this right now. 

The next morning, Damon had the idea to delay the ritual, which led him to finding Ric to get an invite into his apartment. Learning that Klaus had Caroline changed the game though. By a lot. Losing Caroline would gut Liz. He learned that they were being kept in the tomb and headed straight there. He knew that Liz needed to know though. She had probably already realized that Caroline was missing. He sent her a quick text. ‘Klaus has Caroline. Headed to the tomb to get her. Don’t worry.’

Liz felt her heart stop when she got the message. Learning that no one knew where Caroline was had her worried enough, but Klaus having her meant that he planned to use her for the ritual. There was only one thing she could do. Head for the tomb herself to help Damon. She rushed out the door and pushed her car flat out to get there, rushing in just as Damon was undoing Caroline’s chains. “You have to get her out too,” Caroline told Damon, motioning to Jules. 

“I was just gonna kill her,” Damon told her. 

“You can’t,” Caroline begged him. “Please. She helped me. No one deserves to be used like this.” 

Liz saw Damon’s face twitching in that way it did when he was fighting with himself over a course of action. “I’ll get Caroline out of here, while you get her,” she offered. 

Damon sighed and nodded, turning to Jules. “Can you get clear before you turn?” 

“I have time, yeah,” she lied. She would say anything to get out of this and the chance to take out the vampire who killed Mason was just a perk. 

“I let you go, we’re even, yeah?” Damon asked. When she nodded, he undid her chains too and followed Caroline and Liz out. They didn’t make it far though before Jules turned. Unfortunately she caught sight of Caroline first and Damon tackled her. “Get her out of here!” he yelled to Caroline and Liz, not even sure who he was talking to with that statement as he wrestled the werewolf. 

Liz found herself in the worst position she could ever have imagined. Forced to choose between her daughter and the man she loved. There was no choice though. Her daughter would always come first. She had to. She tried to drag Caroline away as she cried. “Damon no! Oh god, this is my fault.” 

Before they could get far the werewolf yelped and fell over. When he saw Klaus standing there, Damon jumped to his feet and got between him and the girls. “You can’t have her,” Damon said seriously. 

“And you think you can stop me?” Klaus chuckled as he stepped over and kicked the unconscious werewolf to make sure. 

Damon knew that he wouldn’t have a chance in that fight. Even if Caroline helped. There was only one thing left that he could do. “No, but I can give you an alternative.” 

“What are you doing?” Liz asked fearfully. 

Damon answered her to Klaus. “You need a vampire for your ritual, take me instead,” he said firmly as he walked towards Klaus. 

“See, I would…but I’m afraid you’re as good as dead anyway,” Klaus smirked and picked at Damon’s torn sleeve, revealing the werewolf bite. “And I would much rather let you die a slow and agonizing death.” 

When Klaus went to step around him, Damon moved back in front of him. “Well I wouldn’t. And if that means that I have to out in a blaze of glory so be it,” Damon said with a challenging sneer. “So I guess it’s a matter of what you want more. Me to die slowly or Caroline for this ritual.” 

Klaus looked him in the eyes for a long moment, weighing his conviction before he turned around. “Prepare the backup vampire. And don’t forget the wolf,” he told the witch that was waiting in the woods. The backup vampire would hurt a bit more anyway. Especially once Damon realized that he was the one at fault for it.


	14. Chapter 14

Once Klaus left, Liz rushed over to Damon and rolled up his sleeve. “You got bit?” she asked worriedly. “And what the hell were you thinking trying to trade yourself like that?” she smacked him in the arm, unable to decide what she wanted to yell at him for first. 

Damon pulled his arm away from her and pulled his sleeve down. “I’m fine,” he told her. “It was just a graze.”

“Well he seemed pretty sure it would still kill you,” Caroline was the one to point out. 

“It’ll take at least a few days, as minor as it is,” Damon told them. “We have more important things to worry about right now. I’ll be fine to see this through. That’s what matters.” 

Liz took a few deep breaths for calm. He was right. If he had a few days then what was happening in two hours took precedence. “Okay. We need to get back then,” she said leading the way back to the car. Damon had apparently run so she gave him a ride back too. 

“And not a word to Elena. Either of you. Even if she survives this, she doesn’t need to worry about me right now,” Damon told them. Thankfully they both agreed with him. At least until after the ritual. Then they would see. Learning that the backup vampire was Jenna hit them hard, but Stefan was already on his way to try and fix that. Bonnie also had a potential way to save Elena and Damon was given the job to get John to the witch house. John who currently wanted to skin him alive for putting Elena in this position in the first place. Maybe he wouldn’t have to worry about the bite killing him after all. 

Liz considered going with Damon, worried about his bite. If he had a fit of delusion or started hallucinating while he was out there they were in trouble. He would know that too though and wouldn’t have gone if he hadn’t felt up to it. That and with as close as she had just come to losing her daughter, she couldn’t bring herself to leave right now. Their job was apparently waiting for news. They both stayed up all night thanks to generous amounts of coffee and the sun was up before Liz got a text message from Damon. ‘Elena ok. Jenna gone. Need cover-up.’

Liz sighed and told Caroline the news and that she had to go. When she got to the scene, Damon was the only one left there and she looked him over worriedly. “I’m fine,” he told her, despite the fact that the way he was leaning on the tree belied that statement. “We’re gonna need you to figure out how to spin this one and then we need to get Jenna taken care of.”

“Well animal attack may be cliché, but given the fact that the wolf is still a wolf, it’s the easiest way this time,” Liz pointed out. “I’m gonna have to call this in, but I’ve got it handled. You should go rest.” 

“I don’t want to leave you alone until I’m sure Klaus is gone,” Damon told her. 

Liz had to admit that it was probably a wise precaution. Out here in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly the best place to be caught unawares. “Okay, you can stay until the deputies get here, but then you have to promise to go rest. Deal?” 

“I can live with that,” Damon told her. 

“Good. Now let me see your arm while we’re waiting,” Liz said in a tone that brooked no argument. 

Damon sighed and rolled up his sleeve. “See? Still okay. It’s spreading slowly.” Which just meant a longer more drawn out death for him, unfortunately, but once he saw all this through he could always speed it up. 

“There has to be something. Some kind of cure,” she said fearfully. She couldn’t take losing him. Not now. 

“There isn’t,” Damon told her, rolling his sleeve down. “So I would rather focus on getting everything taken care of while I still can and just forget about it.” She gave him a long look and he caught her eyes. “Please, Liz,” he said earnestly. 

“Okay. For now, at least,” she agreed. Once he was worse was a different story, but she would let him ignore it until then. “And it looks like the deputies are here, so off you go.” Damon nodded and left, managing not to stumble as he made it to his car. It was as much exhaustion as it was illness though at this point. He’d been up and running on adrenaline for over twenty-four hours now. 

After that was a blur of getting the death covered up with the coroner and then helping with the funeral arrangements for both Jenna and John. Liz pretended not to notice Damon disappearing every so often during all that, and he always looked a little better when he returned. He was still holding firm to not telling Elena, and with how hard she was taking Jenna’s death, Liz was going along with it. For now. That seemed to be her constant mantra these days. For now. Everything was for now. Because Damon was only alive for now. And if she stopped to consider that fact, she would fall apart. Liz unobtrusively helped Damon stay standing during Jenna’s funeral, and only part of her tears were for the deceased and she didn’t say anything when he disappeared afterwards. 

Damon didn’t go home to rest this time though. He had a blood bag pick-me-up in the car and went to find Elena once it was all over. He hoped that he could at least die with her not hating him. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. She asked for time and he wasn’t about to tell her that he was running out, so he just accepted it and apologized again before heading home. Now that everything was taken care of, and he was barely functioning anymore, it was time for this to end. Damon poured himself a drink of the good stuff before he opened the curtains of the big window in the living room and stood in the sunlight. He wanted to enjoy the comfortable feel of it for the last time. Once he finished his drink, he slid his ring off his finger and let it fall to the floor. He could feel his skin burning away and then the next thing he knew he was in the cell in the basement with his brother outside it, promising to find a way to save him. “Just tell me goodbye and get it over with,” Damon snapped before he was overcome by a coughing fit. 

That was when the hallucinations started. The next time he was jolted to reality, Ric was offering him a drink and his ring. He tried to taunt Ric into killing him, but it didn’t work and when he tried the more heavy handed approach, he just ended up with a shot of vervain and he was right back to lost in his mind. The next time he woke up, it was apparently Liz’s turn. “You wanna let me out of here?” he asked hopefully as he was overcome by another coughing fit. “A dirty floor in the middle of a cell is not the place I’d prefer to die.” 

“That depends,” Liz told him, trying to force back her tears. “Are you going to try and finish yourself off again?” 

“Come on, Liz,” Damon groaned. “Are you really going to make me wait out the end in agony as I slowly lose my mind?” 

Liz took a deep shaky breath. “Your brother has an idea. He thinks he has a way out of this. There is still hope.” 

“There’s no hope, Liz. You have to see that.”

“No. I don’t,” she told him. She couldn’t stand to see him dying like this either though. “How about we make a deal? The moment your brother calls me and says that his current plan didn’t work, I’ll put you out of your misery. Until then, you suck it up.”

“And what’s in it for me,” Damon coughed, almost amused. 

“I’ll get you out of this cell and up to your room,” she promised. 

Damon considered it for a moment. It wasn’t like anyone was going to let him kill himself in here. This was apparently the best deal he was gonna get. “Okay. Deal.” 

Liz unlocked the door and went inside, helping him to his feet and up the stairs. Once she had him laid down in his bed, she went and wet a washcloth from his bathroom and came back to wipe the sweat from his brow and hopefully cool him down a bit. When he had a pain fit and doubled over, Liz climbed in bed with him and took the same position he had with Rose, rubbing her hand over his good arm as the other hand ran through his hair. “Shh. It’s okay,” she soothed. 

Once it was passed for the most part, Damon looked up at her. “No, it’s not okay. All those years I blamed Stefan…no one forced me to love her…it was my own choice…I made the wrong choice…Tell Stefan I’m sorry.” 

Liz nodded and said a quiet, “I will.” She recognized this phase from when Rose went through it. It wouldn’t be long now. She hoped Stefan hurried. The mind wandering and apologizing for past sins was far too familiar. 

“I’ve made a lot of choices that have gotten me here,” Damon croaked weakly. “I deserve this…I deserve to die.” 

“No, you don’t,” Liz said firmly, resting her head on his as she lost the battle with her tears. “You don’t deserve any of this.” He’d gotten here by saving her daughter and if she could take his place in this bed she would do it without hesitation. 

“I do, Liz, and that’s okay,” he told her. “Because if I had chosen differently, I wouldn’t have met you.” She buried her face in his sweaty hair as her tears fell and she brushed her hand down his cheek feeling the heat radiating from his usually cool skin. “I know I should have told you sooner…and deathbed confessions are totally cliché…but I love you, Liz…you should know that.” 

Liz choked a sob at his words and threaded her fingers with his. “You’re right,” she sniffled. “Deathbed confessions are very cliché…but I love you too, Damon…if you have to die…I would rather you die knowing how much you’re loved.” 

Damon’s lips twitched in a smile as he found the strength to squeeze her hand. “I wish I’d met you back in eighteen sixty four,” he said sadly. 

“If I had, I’d be dead by now,” she pointed out. 

“So would I,” he told her. “But we could have had a life together…maybe even a family…I wish for that…”

“That does sound nice,” Liz said around the lump in her throat as she leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his lips. She had to do that at least once before he died and it didn’t seem like he had long left. 

“Thank you,” he breathed out. 

“Well it’s me you should be thanking. I’m the one that brought the cure,” a voice said from the doorway. 

“Katherine,” Liz guessed, not moving from her spot on the bed as Katherine approached. When she went to give the cure to Damon, Liz pulled it from her hands and did it herself. Katherine just huffed and left.


	15. Chapter 15

Damon fell asleep right after he took the cure, and Liz desperately hoped that it had arrived in time. It wasn’t long before his skin began to cool and the sweat stopped pouring off of him though. She could also tell he was breathing easier, so she knew it was working. He was gonna be okay. As she realized that, she was able to turn her mind towards the other big question. Had he had any idea what he was saying before or was it just delirium and hallucinations? He’d said her name though. He’d said ‘I love you, /Liz/.’ That had to mean something. And what he’d said about wishing that he could have a life and a family with her…that was beyond even the ‘I love you’ part. That was huge. Skipping right over the whole dating and getting to know you parts and skipping straight to forever. 

If she was honest, she was okay with that though. She felt like she knew Damon far better than she had even known her ex-husband before they were married. They had fought side by side through horrible dangers. Put their lives on the line for each other. She knew him well enough to know that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Deep down, she knew that wasn’t enough though. The rest of her life was nothing to him. It was the rest of /his/ life that would matter, and she didn’t know how she felt about that. She knew that she had to figure it out though. And soon. Especially if he actually remembered this. She would have to either go all in or walk away. She fell asleep before she could make a decision. 

Liz woke first the next morning and was more than a little stiff from sleeping half sitting up and leaning against Damon’s headboard. She ran a hand through his hair before pressing it lightly to his cheek to check his temperature which was back to a cold vampire normal. She could see that he had his color back now too and his breathing was normal. That meant that he was still just sleeping. She eased out of the bed without waking him up and pressed a featherlight kiss to his forehead before slipping out of the room and heading down to the kitchen. 

She was just pouring her first cup of coffee when Elena came in. “Oh. Hi. I didn’t realize you were here,” Elena stopped short at the sight of her. 

“Yeah. I just woke up. I didn’t want to go far after what happened,” Liz said. 

“Oh. Okay. So you don’t know if Stefan’s here?” Elena asked. 

“I don’t know. I fell asleep not long after the cure got here, so he probably came in after that,” Liz told her. 

“Cure?” Elena asked confused.

“No one told you?” Liz asked. She was sure someone would have spilled the beans. 

“Told me what?” Elena asked impatiently. 

“Damon was bitten saving Caroline from a werewolf the night of the ritual,” Liz explained. 

“Wait…but I saw him after that. He helped with all the funeral stuff and he seemed fine.”

“He was putting on a good show. I was practically holding him up for most of the funeral. He didn’t want anyone worrying about him with everything else going on.” 

“That’s why…” Elena trailed off. 

“Why what?” Liz asked curiously. 

“After the funeral…he found me and asked me to forgive him. It was weird because he doesn’t usually do that. He just sucks up until things eventually go back to normal.” 

“And did you?” Liz couldn’t help but ask. 

“N-no. I…I told him I needed time. He didn’t tell me that he was out of time,” she said sadly. “H-how is he?” 

“He’s on the mend. The cure almost didn’t get here in time. I was sure I was watching his last breaths,” Liz shuddered at the memory. 

“Wait…there’s no cure for werewolf bites,” Elena realized. 

“Stefan apparently found one. No idea where or how,” Liz told her. “But it worked.” 

“Where is Damon then?” Elena asked, wanting to check on him herself. 

“He’s still sleeping. I checked on him before I came down.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll talk to him later then. I’m gonna go upstairs and find Stefan.” Liz nodded as she drank her coffee. Elena was back a few minutes later. “He’s not here and his bed wasn’t slept in last night,” she said worriedly. 

“I’m sure he’ll be in contact when he can,” Liz assured her. 

Elena bit her lip in indecision for a moment before she said, “I’m gonna go see if Damon’s heard from him.”

“No, you won’t,” Liz told her, stepping in front of her to block her way. “Damon almost died last night. He is going to sleep as long as he needs to. You can ask him when he wakes up.”

“If something’s wrong with Stefan, then…”

“Then Stefan wouldn’t have been able to contact him either and waking him up won’t get you any closer to answers,” Liz finished. “He’s been out of contact for less than a day.”

“I just want to see…I don’t even have to wake him up. I can just check his phone…”

“No, Elena. Leave him alone,” Liz said firmly. 

“Too late,” Damon grumbled, heading into the kitchen. “I’m already up.” He tossed Elena his phone before he walked back out. 

Liz rushed after him to see him disappear down to the basement so she knew where he was going and that he would be back, so she went back to the kitchen to see Elena turn pale as she looked at Damon’s phone. “What’s wrong?” 

“St-Stefan…he…” Elena couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat, so Liz took the phone from her. According to the text messages from Stefan, he had traded ten years of service to Klaus for the cure. He asked Damon to take care of Elena and keep her away from Klaus and said he’d see him in ten years. Damon had sent a message back that just said, ‘I will. Be safe, little brother. See you then.’

Damon got back with a blood bag that he was drinking from straight which told Liz that he was really starving at the moment, but Elena didn’t even give him a chance. “Tell me you’re not accepting this. That you’re going to go after him.” 

“And what exactly do you expect me to do, Elena?” Damon asked. “If Klaus doesn’t want to be found he won’t be found. We know this already. Even if he could be found, he has a veritable army of witches surrounding him at all times. Even if I could get past them, I’m no match for Klaus, even if Stefan is capable of switching sides and he hasn’t been compelled.”

“So you’re just letting Stefan sacrifice his life for you?” Elena asked heatedly. 

“If I had been consulted, I wouldn’t have let him do it, no. But I wasn’t consulted. I was a little too busy dying and now there’s nothing I can do. And it’s not his whole life. It’s just ten years. That’s like a drop in the bucket when you have eternity.” 

“Well I /don’t/ have eternity and I’m not waiting ten years for him to come home,” Elena snapped heading for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Damon blurred in front of her. 

“To find Klaus and bring Stefan home,” she said stubbornly. 

“I don’t think so,” Damon told her. “In case you missed that part of the message, I promised to keep you safe and away from Klaus and if you think I’m going to break my word after he saved my life, you’re crazy. The only way you’re walking out that door is if you’re going home.” 

Elena glared at him for a long moment before she nodded. “Fine. I’ll go home,” she agreed. At least long enough to figure out where to start looking. 

“I’m holding you to that,” Damon warned. He knew that Ric was still staying there so he would text him to make sure. 

“Goodbye, Damon,” Elena snapped as she brushed by him out the door. 

“You think she’s really going home?” Liz asked him as she handed him his phone back. 

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m texting Ric now. If she doesn’t I’ll have to go after her,” Damon sighed. 

“So much for not being a babysitter,” Liz chuckled. 

“It’s not like I could say no after what he did for me,” Damon sighed. 

“Are you really not going to try and get him back?” Liz asked gently.

“I’m not going to recklessly go after them and try to force their hand. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a way though,” Damon told her. He had carefully crafted his reputation as being reckless and crazy just for situations like this. Not that he couldn’t be reckless and crazy sometimes, but for the most part, he thought things out a lot more than people thought. Liz was probably the only person who really saw that about him. 

“If you need anything from me, I’ll help in any way I can,” Liz promised. 

“You can help me keep Elena out of it,” Damon suggested. “I don’t want her getting her hopes up for something that might not happen anytime soon. Not to mention if she knows what I’m doing…”

“She’ll try to take over and make a mess of things trying to do it her way,” Liz finished. “I get it. I’ll do what I can.” 

“Thank you,” Damon said relieved.


	16. Chapter 16

Once she was sure that Damon was on his feet again, and he had gotten the confirmation from Ric that Elena made it home, Liz headed home herself. She had stopped the vervain in the town’s water after the ritual, so Caroline was back home again now. Since Damon hadn’t mentioned the confession or anything she assumed that he didn’t remember it, which meant she had a little time to figure out what she wanted. Or at least to wrap her head around things before she talked to him about the possibilities anyway. 

She spent the next few days catching up with Caroline after all the mess, and it was Caroline who told her that Damon had stopped Elena from leaving town after Stefan twice in three days and that Bonnie was looking for some kind of spell to help. That was when she started to wonder if maybe he did remember the confession and got the wrong idea when she didn’t bring it up. Otherwise, why hadn’t she heard from him with all this going on. She had even offered to help after all. 

When she got off work the next day…four days since she last talked to Damon, she went by the boarding house to look for him, finding him sitting in the living room with a glass in hand and a large book in his lap. He held out a drink for her without even looking up, and she knew what that meant so she sat down next to him and waited. Once he grabbed a piece of paper and put it in the book before closing it, he looked at her, and cheerfully asked, “And what brings you by today?” 

“Haven’t heard from you in a few days. Wanted to check in and see how you were.”

“I’m fine. Fully recovered,” he told her. 

“Good. I was wondering if we could talk…about what happened when you were sick?” she said tentatively. 

“What’s to talk about?” Damon asked, suddenly much more tense than before. 

Liz looked at him suspiciously, his tension meaning that he likely remembered it and /had/ actually jumped to the wrong conclusion. “You don’t remember?” she asked leadingly. 

“Oh I remember every moment,” Damon snorted derisively. “But it doesn’t change anything.” 

Liz’s look turned to confusion. “What doesn’t it change?” 

“It doesn’t change the fact that I’m a vampire and you’re human. That I can’t give you the life you want. The life you deserve,” he said bitterly. 

“What if that could change?” she asked nervously. She hadn’t decided anything yet, but she wanted to know where his head was. 

“If I could become human again for you, I’d do it in a heartbeat, Liz. You have to know that, but I can’t. And I can’t wish my curse on you,” Damon sighed. 

“You would become human again for me?” she asked surprised. “But you love being a vampire.” 

“I do, but not nearly as much as I love you,” Damon said, looking sadly at her. “If it were possible…”

“Then if you can’t become human for me, I’ll become a vampire for you,” she made a split second decision. If he was willing to change for her, then the least she could do is the same for him. It just so happened that this was the only way possible. 

“Wait…what?” Damon blinked in shock. “You can’t be serious.” 

“I’m completely serious, Damon,” Liz said honestly, reaching a hand to his cheek. “I love you.” 

Damon reached out and took her face in his hands, leaning in for a soft, slow kiss. Liz’s heart sped up exponentially and she knew that Damon would be able to hear it, but she didn’t care. She poured just as much love and devotion into the kiss as he did. Unfortunately, they were both rather distracted, and for a vampire it was saying a lot that he didn’t hear the front door open. They both heard the exclamation that came after it though. “Oh hell no!” Caroline yelped horrified. “No, no, no. There is no way in hell that Damon freaking Salvatore will /ever/ even be in the running to be my step father. No, this isn’t happening. Not a chance.” 

Damon took a few deep breaths for calm. Killing his new girlfriend’s daughter would not be the way to start a relationship. The hurt and worried look on Liz’s face as she was obviously torn between what she wanted and what her daughter wanted wasn’t helping his temper any though. Damon got up and grabbed Caroline’s arm. “Excuse us a moment, Liz?” He didn’t wait for an answer before blurring her downstairs to the basement where they could be sure of privacy. It was this or his room, and he didn’t like the connotations of the latter. 

“What the hell, Damon?! My mother?!” Caroline snapped as she yanked her arm away from him. 

“Look, Caroline. I don’t give a shit if you like me or not. I don’t care if you /ever/ like me. But you /will/ give your mother a chance to be happy.”

“And you’re gonna make her happy?” Caroline scoffed. 

“I plan to spend the rest of her life trying to, if that counts for anything,” Damon said evenly. 

Caroline opened and closed her mouth a few times as his words caught up to her. “You…you really love her?” 

“Yes. I do,” Damon admitted. 

“What about Elena? I thought…hell, everyone thought you were in love with Elena.”

“Well I’m not and I never have been. It just suited my purposes to let people think that. Yes I’ve nearly killed myself half a dozen times at least trying to save her life, but that’s just because of Stefan. Because losing her would kill my brother.” 

“Okay…but…” Caroline was confused and trying to wrap her head around all this. 

“Do you think I was willing to sacrifice my life for you…twice in the same night…for /your/ sake?” he asked pointedly. 

“No, but…” 

“I /love/ your mother, Caroline. More than my own life. And the only thing I want is for her to be happy. And if that means that we call a truce then we /will/ call a truce. Got it?” 

“I guess…” Caroline said hesitantly. 

“Like I said, I don’t care if you like me. I don’t care if you accept me. If you ever call me ‘dad’ I might have to kill you. But for your mother’s sake we can and will play nice,” he said firmly, wanting a clearer agreement. 

“Oh god, I’d kill /myself/ if I ever called you ‘dad’,” she gagged. “But yes. We can play nice. But I swear to god Damon, if you ever hurt her, I will rip your heart out of your chest and shove it down your throat.” 

“Understood,” Damon said with a chuckle before waving her towards the stairs. 

As they came back up, Liz said nervously, “Honey…”

“It’s okay, mom,” Caroline cut her off and hugged her. “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy for you.” 

Liz raised an eyebrow at Damon, who just grinned at her. If she didn’t know better she would suspect compulsion. Bribery wasn’t out of the question though. She would get the story from him later. For now she was just glad that she had her daughter’s support. “Even if it means me becoming a vampire too?” 

Caroline pulled back and looked at her in shock for a second before rounding on Damon. “You didn’t say anything about turning her?!” 

“Because we’d barely mentioned the subject before you got here,” Damon told her. “Whatever happens there will be her decision and hers alone,” he promised. 

“Why would you even want that? You hate vampires?” Caroline asked incredulously. 

“And how many vampires do either of you like?” she chuckled. “I don’t have to like vampires as a whole. The only two people in the world that I love are vampires.” 

“That doesn’t mean that you have to be one,” Caroline pointed out. 

“And what happens if I don’t?” Liz asked pointedly. “You both will have to leave town sooner or later when people realize you’re not aging, but I’ll still keep aging. I’ll end up the little old lady in the nursing home with the boyfriend young enough be my grandson and then you’ll both have to face the pain of losing me, and Damon’s mentioned enough about what emotions are like as a vampire for me to want to spare you both as much of that pain as possible.” 

“You don’t have to do this just for us, Liz,” Damon said gently. “I love you either way. Human or vampire, and I couldn’t give you up now anyway.” Even if Caroline wouldn’t kill him, the moment she’d kissed him back like that, there was zero chance of him walking away, no matter the consequences. 

“I know,” she told him, reaching for his hand, which he took and threaded their fingers together. “But you’ve carried your burdens alone long enough. I told you before that I would stand by you always. I’m just living up to my promise now. If you want me forever that is,” she added. 

Damon chuckled and pulled her close. “I would love nothing more than for us to have forever, Liz, and as soon as you get some vacation time from work, we can take a couple weeks away and get this done.” 

When Liz grinned and kissed him, Caroline said, “Eww!” and covered her eyes as she turned away. “I’m gonna go…somewhere else. Maybe stay with Elena tonight. Yeah. That way I don’t have to know if Mom comes home tonight or not so I don’t have to wonder what she’s doing. Yep. That’s a plan. Bye.” Liz burst into laughter, resting her head on Damon’s shoulder as the front door closed behind Caroline on her way out.


End file.
